UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 


o. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA  •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


NATIONAL  IDEALS 
AND  PROBLEMS 


ESSAYS  FOR  COLLEGE  ENGLISH 


BY 

MAURICE  GARLAND  FULTON 

PROFESSOR  OF  ENGLISH,  DAVIDSON  COLLEGE 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1918 


COPYRIGHT,  1918 
By  THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  November,  1918. 


3ln  J|onor  of 
^atribaon  College 


WHO    IN    CHEERFUL    WILLINGNESS    TO 

GIVE   SUPREME   DEVOTION  JOINED  THE 

NATIONAL  FORCES  BANDED  TO  UPHOLD 

LIBERTY,  PEACE,  AND  JUSTICE 

THROUGHOUT  THE  WORLD 


PREFACE 

In  this  book  my  purpose  has  been  to  bring  together  a  number 
of  significant  essays,  addresses,  and  state  papers  which  should 
be  helpful  in  showing  students  what  others,  chiefly  their  fellow- 
Americans,  have  thought  or  now  think  about  their  country — 
its  people,  its  ideals,  and  its  significance  both  at  home  and  abroad. 

The  time  is  opportune  for  seeking  a  more  intelligent  acquaint- 
ance with  our  national  ideals  and  problems.  The  war  thrusts 
upon  the  nation  the  need  of  burnishing  ideals  as  well  as  weapons. 
We  should  use  this  war  to  clarify  our  vision  and  intensify  our 
national  purposes,  and  we  must,  in  our  schools  and  colleges, 
make  it  a  means  for  developing  catholicity  of  spirit,  human  sym- 
pathy, sacrificial  devotion  to  convictions,  and  passion  for  truth 
and  justice. 

Realizing  the  danger  of  doing  violence  in  the  stress  of  conflict 
to  the  very  ideals  we  seek  to  defend  and  exalt,  President  Wilson 
early  addressed  a  plea  to  the  teachers  in  all  grades  of  schools 
urging  the  conservation  of  our  ideals.  Said  he,  "The  war  is 
bringing  to  the  minds  of  our  people  a  new  appreciation  of  the 
problems  of  national  life  and  a  deeper  understanding  of  the 
meaning  and  aims  of  democracy.  Matters  which  we  have  here- 
tofore deemed  commonplace  and  trivial  are  seen  in  a  truer 
light.  .  .  .  When  the  war  is  over  we  must  apply  the  wisdom  we 
have  acquired  in  purging  and  ennobling  the  life  of  the  world." 

An  intelligent  understanding  of  American  democracy  is  not 
merely  a  matter  of  interest;  it  is  a  patriotic  duty  for  making 
both  better  Americans  and  better  citizens  of  the  world.  Democ- 
racy is  a  body  of  ideals.  Armies  and  navies  alone  cannot  make 
the  world  safe  for  democracy.  The  world  must  be  wrought  to 
sympathy  with  democratic  ideals,  and,  in  accomplishing  this, 
the  schools — institutions  devoted  to  the  conserving  of  ideals  and 
agencies  able  to  reach  the  next  generation — must  undertake  to 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

inculcate  these  principles  for  which  we  are  fighting.  For  what 
shall  it  profit  us  if  we  gain  the  whole  world  for  democracy  and 
thereby  lose  the  soul  of  democracy? 

In  this  work  the  teacher  of  English  has  a  large  part.  Those 
who  teach  history  or  political  science  may  give  the  facts,  but 
those  who  handle  the  nation's  literature  impart  the  spirit  of  the 
nation.  Since  American  literature  'affords  the  best  possible  in- 
terpretation of  American  ideals,  the  English  teacher  should  have 
his  students  give  attention  more  largely  than  heretofore  to  the 
history  and  progress  of  American  thought  as  recorded  in  Ameri- 
can literature. 

The  selections  in  this  volume  do  not,  of  course,  belong  under 
the  classification  "literature"  in  the  narrower  sense  of  the  term. 
Nevertheless  they  are  discussions  of  value  in  reaching  conclu- 
sions regarding  the  American  spirit  and  ideals,  and  as  such  may 
be  appropriately  brought  into  the  literary  vista  of  the  student. 
Such  study  of  American  life  and  institutions  as  this  book  con- 
templates may  be  made  in  connection  with  the  course  in 
American  literature. 

But  this  book  would  seem  to  have  its  most  useful  place  in 
the  so-called  "thought-courses"  in  composition.  This  type  of 
course  has  become  so  widely  popular  in  recent  years  that  it 
needs  no  defense  or  explanation.  Its  fundamental  principle  of 
accompanying  the  reading  of  thought-provoking  selections  with 
discussion,  oral  or  written,  upon  questions  and  topics  suggested 
by  the  reading  is  a  most  stimulating  way  to  come  to  an  under- 
standing of  national  ideals.  Furthermore,  this  method  is  a 
replica  of  the  way  in  which  definite  national  ideals  must  be 
reached.  Each  person  must  reach  his  own  independent  conclu- 
sions and  then  compound  them  by  intelligent  discussion  in  public 
and  in  private.  Under  this  natural  method,  the  student  is 
brought  to  his  own  conclusions  and  to  correcting  or  modifying 
them  in  the  light  of  those  formed  by  his  classmates. 

The  selections  have  been  arranged  into  a  rough  sequence  and 
grouped  under  certain  headings.  Despite  the  fact  that  in  some 
cases  positions  may  seem  arbitrarily  assigned,  the  arrangement 
will  be  found  of  practical  value  in  emphasizing  the  larger  aspects 


PREFACE  ix 

of  the  study.  A  convenient  starting-point  is  had  in  a  group  of 
selections  discussing  the  predominant  characteristics  of  the 
American  people.  Next,  to  make  this  study  of  American  char- 
acteristics more  concrete,  come  selections  dealing  with  a  few 
great  Americans  who  seem  to  exemplify  the  special  make-up  of 
mind  and  faculties  that  is  the  specific  product  of  American 
democracy.  The  third  group  is  composed  of  epoch-making 
addresses  and  state  papers  which  every  young  American  should 
know  at  first  hand.  These  are  followed  by  a  group  of  selections 
discussing  in  a  general  way  the  aims  and  tendencies  of  American 
democracy.  The  next  two  groups  present  the  closely  related 
topics  of  the  citizen's  part  in  government  and  the  especial 
responsibilities  that  rest  upon  the  college-trained.  After  these 
comes  a  section  devoted  to  a  discussion  of  the  principles  that 
must  be  adhered  to  in  making  such  changes  and  adjustments 
as  the  future  may  require.  The  last  division  contains  selections 
discussing  how  and  why  America  became  a  participant  in  the 
world  war,  and  what  she  desires  the  outcome  of  the  struggle  to  be. 

In  order  to  keep  the  book  of  moderate  size,  much  important 
material  had  to  be  omitted.  At  no  point  was  it  harder  to  make 
rejections  than  in  the  second  division,  Patterns  of  Americanism. 
Jefferson,  Jackson,  Grant,  Lee,  Lowell,  and  many  others,  repre- 
sentative of  Americanism  in  one  way  or  another,  seemed  to 
demand  inclusion,  but  finally  the  list  was  left  with  but  four 
upon  whom  there  would  be  almost  universal  agreement. 

A  word  of  explanation  seems  needed  regarding  the  absence 
of  selections  from  Bryce's  The  American  Commonwealth.  My 
first  intention  was  to  include  several  chapters  from  this 
source.  But  when  it  became  possible  for  me  to  prepare  for  the 
moderate-priced  English  and  American  classics  series  of  the 
Macmillan  Company  a  volume  including  some  twelve  or  fifteen 
of  the  most  significant  chapters  of  Bryce's  book,  under  the  title 
American  Democracy,  I  thought  it  advisable  to  use  all  the  space 
in  this  book  for  material  from  other  quarters,  and  to  suggest  to 
those  who  may  desire  material  from  The  American  Common- 
wealth that  they  may  find  it  in  the  collection  referred  to. 

I  take  this  opportunity  of  recording  in  a  general  way  grate- 


x  PREFACE 

ful  thanks  to  those  writers  who  have  generously  permitted  me 
to  use  their  work  and  to  those  publishers  who  have  courteously 
dismissed  copyright  restrictions  in  my  favor.  Specific  acknowl- 
edgements have  been  made  at  appropriate  places  throughout 
the  book. 

M.  G.  F. 


CONTENTS 

American  Traits 

Page 

AMERICAN  QUALITY Nathaniel  Southgate  Shaler  i 

AMERICAN  CHARACTER Brander  Matthews  14 

EFFECTS  OF  THE  FRONTIER  UPON  AMERICAN  CHARACTER  .  . 

Frederick  Jackson  Turner  33 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  ON  AMERICA 

Walter  Edward  Weyl  47 

Patterns  of  Americanism 

FRANKLIN:    THE  CITIZEN George  William  Alger  58 

THE  AMERICANISM  OF  WASHINGTON   .    .    .  Henry  Van  Dyke  67 

LINCOLN  AS  AN  AMERICAN Herbert  Croly  74 

EMERSON Matthew  Arnold  85 

Landmark  Addresses  and  State  Papers 

DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE     ....  Thomas  Jefferson  107 

FAREWELL  ADDRESS George  Washington  112 

THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE James  Monroe  128 

THE  STATES  AND  THE  UNION Daniel  Webster  131 

SECOND  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS Abraham  Lincoln  139 

WAR  MESSAGE Woodrow  Wilson  141 

American  Democracy 

THE  HERITAGE  OF  LIBERTY     ....    Charles  Mills  Gayley  152 
THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE  IN  THE  LIGHT  OF 

MODERN  CRITICISM Moses  Coit  Tyler  158 

DEMOCRACY James  Russell  Lowell  166 

THE  WORKING  OF  AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY 

Charles  William  Eliot  178 

THE  SURVIVAL  OF  CIVIL  LIBERTY  .  Franklin  Henry  Giddings  191 


xii  CONTENTS 

Citizenship  and  Patriotism 

Page 

PATRIOTISM,  INSTINCTIVE  AND  INTELLIGENT 

Ira  Woods  Rawer th  210 

MESSAGE  OF  THE  FLAG franklin  Knight  Lane  221 

GOOD  CITIZENSHIP Henry  Cabot  Lodge  224 

WHAT  "AMERICANISM"  MEANS    ....     Theodore  Roosevelt  236 

Educated  Leadership 

THE  SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  COLLEGE-BRED  .  William  James  249 
THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  A  LIBERAL  EDUCATION  AND 

TRUE  AMERICANISM Henry  Cabot  Lodge  257 

LIBERTY  AND  DISCIPLINE Abbott  Lawrence  Lowell  269 

NATIONALIZING  EDUCATION John  Dewey  282 

Changes  and  Adjustments 

EXPERIMENTS  IN  GOVERNMENT Elihu  Root  291 

THE  LIBERATION  OF  A  PEOPLE'S  VITAL  ENERGIES     .... 

Woodrow  Wilson  301 

A  PLEA  FOR  THE  AMERICAN  TRADITION  .     Winston  Churchill  310 

CAN  DEMOCRACY  BE  ORGANIZED?  .  Edwin  Anderson  Alderman  325 

In  Arms  for  Democracy 

THE  WORLD  CONFLICT   IN   ITS    RELATION   TO    AMERICAN 

DEMOCRACY Walter  Lippmann  340 

AMERICAN  AND  ALLIED  IDEALS    .    .    .   Stuart  Pratt  Sherman  351 

ETHICAL  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  WAR Gilbert  Murray  364 

After  the  Conflict 

A  LEAGUE  TO  ENFORCE  WORLD  PEACE 

William  Howard  Taft    376 

GOOD  TEMPER  IN  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS 

Lawrence  Pearsall  Jacks    388 
WHAT  SHALL  WE  WIN  WITH  THE  WAR? 

Ernest  Hunter  Wright    401 


NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 


AMERICAN   TRAITS 

AMERICAN  QUALITY1 

NATHANIEL  SOUTHGATE  SEALER 

[Nathaniel  Southgate  Shaler  (1841-1906)  was  a  distinguished  American 
geologist,  born  in  Newport,  Kentucky.  He  graduated  in  1862  at  the  Lawrence 
Scientific  School  of  Harvard  University.  A  few  years  later  he  became  con- 
nected with  the  instructional  staff  in  that  institution,  and  held,  from  time  to 
time,  different  professorships  in  his  field  of  work.  In  1891  be  became  dean  of 
the  Lawrence  Scientific  School.  His  interesting  analysis  of  American  char- 
acter which  is  here  reprinted  shows  the  scientific  attitude  which  is  not  con- 
tent with  the  actual  facts,  but  must  seek  probable  explanations  of  its  origin. 
It  also  shows  traces  of  a  favorite  thesis  of  the  writer — that  human  character- 
istics are  the  result  largely  of  environment.  This  view  is  developed  at  length 
in  respect  to  the  United  States  in  his  book,  Nature  and  Man  in  America] 

The  most  important,  because  the  most  fundamental,  of  prob- 
lems concerning  the  quality  of  the  American  man,  concerns  his 
physical  condition,  as  compared  with  that  of  his  kindred  beyond 
the  seas.  As  to  this  point  the  evidence  is  so  clear  that  it  needs 
little  discussion.  It  is  evident  that  the  American  Indians,  a  race 
evidently  on  the  ground  for  many  thousand  years  before  the 
coming  of  the  Europeans,  had  found  the  land  hospitable.  For 
savages  they  were  remarkably  well  developed,  and  though  un- 
fitted for  steady  labor,  their  bodies  were  well  made  and  enduring. 
Taking  their  place,  the  North  Europeans,  representing  a  wide 
range  of  local  varieties,  English,  Irish,  Highland  Scotch,  Ger- 
mans, Scandinavians,  Normans,  French,  and  many  other  groups 
of  Old  World  peoples,  have,  since  their  implantation  a  hundred 
years  or  more  ago,  shown  that  the  area  of  the  continent  from  the 
Rio  Grande  to  the  far  north  is  as  suited  to  our  kind  as  is  any 
part  of  the  earth.  This  is  sufficiently  proved  by  the  statistics  of 
American  soldiers  gathered  during  the  Civil  War;  the  American 

^rom  International  Monthly,  vol.  iv,  p.  48  (July,  1901).  Reprinted  by  permission. 


2  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

white  man  of  families  longest  in  this  country,  is,  on  the  average, 
larger  than  his  European  kinsman;  the  increase  being  mainly  hi 
the  size  of  head  and  chest.  It  is  further  indicated  by  the  endur- 
ance of  these  men  in  the  trials  of  the  soldier's  life  and  by  the 
remarkable  percentage  of  recoveries  from  wounds.  This  endur- 
ance of  wounds  was  regarded  by  the  late  Dr.  Brown-Sequard  as 
a  feature  common  to  all  the  mammals  of  this  continent,  being,  as 
he  claimed  on  the  basis  of  an  extensive  experience,  as  character- 
istic of  American  rabbits  as  of  American  men.  Moreover,  the 
statistics  of  life  insurance  companies  doing  business  in  this 
country  appear  to  indicate  that  the  expectation  of  life  is  greater 
here  than  hi  the  Old  World.  .  .  . 

Accepting  the  conclusion  that  the  bodily  condition  of  our  race 
is,  in  this  country  at  least,  as  good  as  in  the  continent  whence 
they  came,  we  will  now  turn  to  the  questions  as  to  their  moral 
and  intellectual  development  in  the  new  land.  First  of  these  to 
be  considered  is  that  which  relates  to  the  attitude  of  the  individ- 
ual man  toward  his  fellows  of  the  commonwealth.  However 
we  may  state  this  question,  it  is  likely  to  appear  to  be  of  a  shad- 
owy nature;  seen  clearly,  however,  it  will  be  recognized  as  of 
fundamental  importance.  It  were  best  approached  by  a  com- 
parison of  the  usual  state  of  mind  of  communities  in  Europe  as 
regards  other  groups  of  the  same  race  and  country,  from  which 
they  are  separated,  as  are  people  dwelling  in  neighboring  villages. 
Having  journeyed  much  afoot  in  England  and  continental 
Europe,  I  have  often  had  occasion  to  remark  the  very  general 
lack  of  confidence  which  the  common  men  of  any  place  have  in 
those  who,  though  dwelling  nearby,  are  personally  unknown  to 
them.  Traces  of  this  humor  may  be  found  in  England  and 
northern  Germany,  where  it  may  commonly  be  noted  in  a  good 
natured  contempt  for  the  unknown  compatriot.  Further  south- 
ward this  limitation  of  sympathy  becomes  more  definite.  An- 
cient hatreds  between  the  citizens  of  neighboring  communes 
find  expression  in  legends  and  songs  that  continue  the  bitterness 
to  this  day.  In  Italy  this  partition  of  the  people  in  spirit  goes  so 
far  that  the  pedestrian  who  has  become  friendly  with  those  who 
dwell  in  any  little  rural  society  will  often  be  warned  that  he  will 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  3 

be  in  danger  as  soon  as  he  comes  among  the  dreadful  folk  who 
dwell  on  the  other  side  of  the  divide. 

To  an  observant  American  who  journeys  in  Europe  in  a  way 
that  brings  him  in  contact  with  its  people,  this  morcdlement 
of  states  into  little  bits  which  are  united  not  by  any  common 
direct  sympathy,  but  only  by  the  bond  of  a  common  rule,  is  not 
only  very  evident,  but  in  singular  contrast  to  what  he  has  been 
accustomed  to  in  his  own  country.  Though  from  its  familiarity 
it  escapes  the  attention  of  most  people,  it  is  one  of  the  most  note- 
worthy social  phenomena  of  the  New  World,  that  the  citizen  of 
Maine  accepts,  as  by  a  kind  of  instinct,  his  fellowman  of  Texas 
or  California  as  a  real  compatriot,  as  a  person  who  feels  and  acts 
as  he  does  himself.  It  is  evident  that  this  is  no  recently  acquired 
state  of  mind;  its  existence  clearly  antedates  the  formation  of 
our  government;  it,  indeed,  made  the  Federal  union  possible. 
For  a  half  century  slavery  limited  the  extension  of  the  motive, 
though  it  did  not  altogether  part  the  people  of  the  North  and 
South.  This  habit  of  confidence  in  the  neighbor,  however 
remote,  which  is  at  the  foundation  of  the  quality  of  our  people, 
goes  beyond  the  national  limits.  It  has  effectively  made  an  end 
of  the  rancors  which  once  existed  toward  the  mother  country. 
Watch  as  one  may  the  talk  of  our  people,  we  now  hear  nothing 
indicating  more  than  a  good-humored  quirk  concerning  John 
Bull  and  his  ways. 

At  first  sight  it  may  seem  as  if  this  confidence  in  the  fellow- 
man, which  is  the  foundation  of  American  quality,  is  but  a  mani- 
festation of  their  prevailing  good  nature.  That  it  is  other  and 
more  than  this  is  fairly  well  shown  by  many  incidents  occurring 
in  and  after  the  Civil  War.  Those  who  remember  that  mighty 
clutch  will  recall  how  in  its  worst  days  the  soldiers  of  the  con- 
tending armies  trusted  one  another  much  as  they  would  their 
own  comrades.  It  is  said  that  in  the  Fredericksburg  campaign 
a  number  of  Federal  soldiers  spent  Christmas  with  a  Confederate 
regiment  with  whom  they  had  made  acquaintance  in  the  cam- 
paign. All  the  hard  usage  of  war  could  not  sweep  away  the 
neighborly  trust  between  men  who  were  yet  ready  for  the  bitter- 
est fighting  to  accomplish  their  objects. 


4  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

This  feature  of  confidence  in  the  essential  likeness  of  the 
fellowman  which  holds  among  our  people  is,  perhaps,  best 
shown  hi  the  closing  incidents  of  the  Civil  War.  There  was  at 
the  time  much  talk  about  guerrilla  warfare,  such  as  the  Dutch 
have  waged  in  South  Africa;  but  when  it  became  evident  that 
effective  national  resistance  was  no  longer  possible,  the  sub- 
jugated people  turned  to  their  conquerors  as  to  their  fellow- 
citizens,  with  a  measure  of  trust  in  their  quality  such  as  under 
like  conditions  the  world  had  not  before  known.  Owing  to  an 
unhappy  series  of  political  accidents  and  much  actual  knavery, 
the  trust  of  the  southerners  in  the  quality  of  their  northern 
brethren  seemed  for  a  lime  ill-founded.  During  the  so-called 
reconstruction  period,  the  states  which  had  revolted  were  sub- 
jected to  a  very  oppressive  rule.  Yet,  through  it  all,  the  people 
trusted,  happily  not  in  vain,  to  the  American  quality  of  their 
sometime  enemies  to  set  them  right.  So,  too,  in  the  last  step  in 
the  work  of  reconstruction,  when  the  northern  people  found  the 
southern  undoing,  in  an  indirect  way,  that  provision  of  the  Con- 
stitution which  gives  the  negro  the  ballot  on  the  same  terms  with 
the  white  man;  the  acquiescence  of  the  Republican  party  in  this 
course  finds  its  explanation  in  the  general  conviction  that  the 
southern  people  are  doing  about  as  well  as  can  be  expected  with 
a  problem  of  exceeding  difficulty.  The  history  of  secession  and 
reconstruction  discloses  a  consensus  among  the  citizens  of  this 
country  such  as  may  be  sought  in  vain  in  any  other. 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  American's  belief  in  the  unseen 
neighbor  as  like  unto  himself  is  not  only  the  foundation  of  his 
true  democracy,  but  the  basis  on  which  rest  certain  other  im- 
portant elements  of  his  quality.  To  it  is  due  the  exceptional 
range  and  activity  of  the  sympathetic  motives,  such  as  led  to 
the  war  with  Spam,  and  to  the  almost  preposterous  welcome  of 
the  captured  officers  of  the  Spanish  fleet;  and  such  now  moves  so 
many  of  our  folk  to  protest  against  the  doings  of  this  nation  in 
the  Philippines.  It  is  also  marked  in  the  constant  sympathy 
with  suffering,  whenceever  comes  the  cry.  Not  that  this  accord 
with  the  fellowman  is  peculiar  to  Americans;  it  is,  indeed,  a 
part  of  modern  life,  but  the  effect  of  it  is  evidently  felt  by  a 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  5 

larger  part  of  our  people,  is  more  national  with  us  than  else- 
where. This  quality  of  sympathy  is,  indeed,  near  to  being,  if 
it  be  not  in  fact,  a  national  weakness.  Too  little  limited  by 
reason,  it  led  to  the  war  with  Spain  for  the  rescue  of  Cuba,  with 
the  common  consequence  of  war,  a  series  of  difficulties  of  which 
no  man  can  see  the  end. 

A  most  important  result  of  this  belief  in  the  essential  likeness 
of  men  is  the  eminently  kindly  quality  of  the  American.  The 
proof  of  this  on  a  large  scale  is  again  to  be  had  in  the  history  of 
the  Rebellion.  Though  this  contest,  like  all  war  whatsoever, 
was  replete  with  brutality  and  horror,  it  was  singularly  distin- 
guished from  all  like  contentions  by  the  mercy  shown  to  non- 
combatants,  by  the  care  for  women  and  children,  and  by  the 
leniency  with  which  the  subjugated  leaders  were  treated.  The 
evidence  to  support  these  statements  cannot  be  here  given  in 
any  detail.  To  exhibit  it  fitly  would  require  an  extended  study 
of  the  matter;  I  cannot,  however,  forbear  to  set  forth  a  few  in- 
cidents which  came  to  my  knowledge  at  the  time,  and  which 
served  to  illustrate  the  temper  of  our  people  in  conditions  which 
bring  out  the  worst  qualities  of  men. 

Shortly  after  the  close  of  the  Rebellion,  I  questioned  many 
persons  who  had  been  in  the  most  sanguinary  contests,  to  find 
whether  they  had  observed  any  instances  where  prisoners,  taken 
in  the  heat  of  battle,  had  been  harmed.  As  the  result  of  this 
inquiry,  which  was  made  of  over  one  hundred  ex-soldiers,  I 
learned  of  one  or  two  cases  where  prisoners  had  been  shot  by 
members  of  a  rabble  home  guard,  men  generally  of  a  much  lower 
grade  than  the  embodied  troops  and  without  adequate  control 
by  officers.  Among  disciplined  troops,  there  was  but  one  ex- 
ample of  cruelty,  if  such  it  may  be  called,  where  a  Federal  soldier, 
as  he  clutched  the  musket  of  a  surrendering  Confederate,  slapped 
him  on  the  face;  and  he  was  at  once  put  under  arrest  for  his 
brutal  conduct. 

In  the  campaign  of  1862,  between  the  armies  of  Buell  and 
Bragg  for  the  possession  of  Kentucky,  movements  which  led  to 
the  fiercest  action  of  the  war,  the  conditions  were  such  as  have 
elsewhere  always  brought  vast  suffering  to  non-combatants.  It 


6  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

was  a  more  truly  internecine  struggle  than  occurred  in  any 
other  part  of  the  great  field.  The  state  was  divided  against  itself, 
communities  and  families  were  rent.  In  instances,  probably 
numbering  thousands,  brothers,  or  fathers  and  sons,  were  in 
opposing  armies.  It  is  doubtful  if  in  any  other  time  have  people 
of  our  race  been  so  moved  by  fury  to  the  foundations  of  their 
souls.  Yet  at  the  end  of  it,  I  recall  that  none  of  the  many  I 
questioned  knew  of  harm  having  come  to  woman  or  child;  that 
whenever  a  flag  of  truce  gave  the  chance  of  meeting,  there  was 
expression  of  a  mutual  anxiety  to  "keep  the  fighting  clean," 
and  a  determination  to  insure  this  end  by  slaying  all  offenders 
against  decency. 

The  evidence  of  good  nature  afforded  by  the  treatment  of  the 
leaders  of  the  Rebellion  is  so  general  and  well  known  that  it 
needs  no  setting  forth.  One  such  came  under  my  eyes  when, 
just  after  the  war,  Alexander  Stephens,  the  ex-Vice-President  of 
the  ex-Confederacy,  because  he  was  a  cripple,  was,  by  general 
consent,  allowed  to  select  his  seat  in  the  hall  of  the  House  at 
Washington,  before  the  other  members  drew  lots  for  their  places. 
There  were  some  marring  deeds,  as,  for  instance,  the  execution 
of  Wertz,  and  the  chaining  of  Jefferson  Davis,  an  unoffending 
prisoner;  but  the  conduct  of  our  people  at  the  end  of  the  Rebel- 
lion, indeed  we  may  say  the  whole  conduct  of  that  vast  struggle, 
displays  their  eminently  merciful  quality. 

In  the  interchange  of  wit  and  humor,  wherein  men  show  their 
quality  in  an  unpremeditated  way,  we  have  a  chance  to  discern 
another  evidence  of  the  singular  confidence  of  the  American  as 
to  the  likeness  of  the  fellowman  to  himself.  Among  other 
peoples  this  instinctive  criticism  of  life  is  commonly  turned  upon 
the  personal  differences  between  men,  those  of  individuals, 
classes,  or  races.  It  usually  exhibits  an  essentially  narrow,  hed- 
onistic motive.  In  this  country,  on  the  other  hand,  the  criticism 
most  often  assumes  the  similarity  of  men,  and  finds  the  amuse- 
ment in  larger  features  of  identity  and  contrast  of  situations. 
Thus,  the  humor  of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  especially  that  of  the 
frontiersman,  has  a  sympathetic  motive  which  is  not  found  else- 
where. It  is  apt  to  relate  to  the  insufficiencies  of  mankind  rather 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  7 

than  to  the  defects  of  particular  men;  not  rarely  it  takes  the 
fine  allegorical  form,  wherein  much  apparent  profanity  does  not 
hide  the  really  high  moral  tone.  Thus  it  comes  about  that  the 
American  is  by  no  means  witty  as  compared  with  the  French- 
man; from  that  point  of  view,  he  may  fairly  be  termed  dull; 
but  in  him  there  is  characteristically  an  inextinguishable  spirit 
of  humor.  Like  his  prototype,  Mercutio,  even  the  wound  that 
ends  him  is  a  fair  subject  for  a  quirk.  Like  the  other  accidents 
of  life,  "'tis  not  so  deep  as  a  well,  nor  so  wide  as  a  church- 
door;  but  'tis  enough,  'twill  serve."  If  this  view  be  true,  our 
much-discussed  American  humor  is  a  very  natural  product  of 
our  assumption  as  to  the  intimate  kinship  of  men. 

Turning  from  the  simpler  emotions  which  lie  at  the  founda- 
tions of  human  nature,  let  us  consider  what  evidence  is  to  be 
had  that  shows  us  something  concerning  the  permanent  ideals 
that  have  been  developed  among  our  people.  So  far  as  ideals 
relate  to  the  home,  they  appear  to  be,  with  slight  exceptions, 
essentially  those  that  were  transmitted  to  us  from  the  mother 
country;  the  difference  being  that  the  head  of  the  house  is  far 
less  its  master  than  in  the  Old  World.  Here,  again,  we  have  the 
primary  concept  of  democracy,  that  of  the  essential  likeness  of 
human  beings,  working  to  break  down  the  ancient  idea  as  to 
the  rightful  power  of  the  father  over  the  family,  with  the  result 
that  the  normal  American  household  is  a  type  of  the  democracy 
of  which  it  forms  a  part.  It  is  not  likely  that  this  change  of  view 
has,  in  any  measure,  weakened  the  hold  of  parents  on  their 
children;  but  to  it  is  probably  due,  in  some  degree,  the  rapid 
increase  of  the  divorce  rate,  which,  as  is  well  known,  is  higher  in 
this  than  in  any  other  country. 

The  ideal  of  the  commonwealth  came  to  us,  with  that  of  the 
family,  by  inheritance;  the  name  itself  is  an  importation,  but 
there  is  an  evident  change  in  the  contents  of  the  conception. 
Until  our  government  was  founded,  there  was  no  instance  in 
which  men  had  developed  patriotic  instincts  relating  to  such  a 
complex  as  the  United  States  presents.  In  the  Old  World,  except 
in  some  measure  in  Switzerland,  for  all  the  experiments  in  gov- 
erning that  have  there  been  essayed,  men  have  not  proved  them- 


8  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

selves  able  to  maintain  a  divided  allegiance,  such  as  is  required 
of  American  citizens,  and  by  them  effectively  rendered,  in  the 
love  and  duty  they  give  to  the  state  and  the  Union  in  which 
they  are  included.  In  all  experiments  previously  made,  it  was 
evident  that  the  sense  of  obligation  had  to  relate  to  one  center; 
with  rare  exceptions — hi  fact  only  in  small  oligarchies  where  the 
motives  due  to  personal  association  of  all  the  leaders  existed — 
the  reference  of  allegiance  had  to  be  to  a  sovereign,  whether  king 
or  Cromwell,  an  evident  leader  beheld  upon  a  throne.  It  is  true 
that  the  American  complex  was  the  result  of  an  accident  of 
government  which  united  several  centers  of  growth,  but  it  is 
none  the  less  a  remarkable  fact  that  the  system  of  allegiance 
within  allegiance,  with  no  reference  to  any  devotion  to  indi- 
viduals or  dynasties  and  with  no  association  with  religious  faiths, 
should  have  been  accepted  by  our  people  without  debate  except 
as  to  the  mere  details,  and  with  no  sense  of  the  novelty  of  the 
conditions  they  were  establishing.  This  course  of  action,  appar- 
ently so  spontaneous  and  immediate,  indicates  that  the  political 
sense  of  the  American  people  had  undergone  an  unrecognized 
development  in  the  century  and  a  half  of  colonial  life  before  the 
Revolution.  It  is  impossible  here  to  essay  an  analysis  of  this 
growth.  It  may,  however,  be  noted  that,  more  than  any  other 
feature,  it  indicates  the  subtle  effect  of  the  conditions  of  the  New 
World  on  the  spirit  of  men. 

The  essence  of  the  political  allegiance  of  the  American  people 
is  evidently  not  to  a  definite  bit  of  the  earth,  nor  to  the  memories 
of  the  past,  which  are  to  a  great  extent  the  basis  of  that  motive 
in  the  Old  World,  but  to  ideals  of  government.  The  people  of 
France,  for  instance,  and  the  same  is  true  of  most  other  coun- 
tries, love  their  land  and  its  traditions  equally  well,  whatever 
kind  of  government  manages  to  set  itself  over  them.  Here, 
however,  as  is  well  shown  by  the  history  of  the  Civil  War,  the 
affection  is  for  the  system  of  the  commonwealth  as  a  system, 
even  more  than  for  the  results  attained  by  it.  Love  of  the  land 
of  a  romantic  kind,  such  as  has  been  the  basis  of  so  much  that  is 
noble  as  well  as  unhappy  in  other  realms,  is  evidently  not  a 
leading  motive  with  us.  It  is  true  that  slavery,  in  an  immediate 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  9 

way,  brought  about  the  War  of  Secession,  but  the  question 
which  was  debated,  which  moved  the  people  as  men  have  rarely 
if  ever  before  been  moved,  concerned  the  relative  weight  of 
the  allegiance  the  citizen  owed  to  his  state  and  to  the  Nation. 
It  is  conceivable  that  the  American  might  be  transplanted 
to  some  other  land,  and  that  the  deportation  would  bring 
with  it  little  if  any  sense  of  exile,  provided  his  political  order 
went  with  him.  But  for  this  order  he  is  prepared  to  do  battle 
to  the  end. 

It  appears  like  a  contradiction  to  say  that  the  love  of  our 
people  for  their  government  does  not  include  a  devotion  to  the 
instruments  which  set  it  forth.  We  are  much  given  to  patching 
our  constitutions  and,  at  times,  to  juggling  with  them,  but  the 
essence  of  the  motive  appears  to  be  love  of  a  definite  political 
order,  an  intense  need  of  a  distinctly  stated  body  of  negative 
law  which  will  permit  the  largest  possible  measure  of  liberty. 
The  clinging  to  the  system  of  states  in  a  nation  apparently  rests 
on  the  conviction  that  under  that  system  the  maximum  of  free- 
dom may  be  attained.  .  .  . 

The  most  indicative  feature  in  American  quality  is  that 
which  is  expressed  in  the  religious  freedom  which  has  been 
attained  in  this  country.  In  a  rude,  imperfect  form  this  ideal 
existed  in  the  Elizabethan  time.  Evidently  it  was  not  brought 
from  the  Old  World,  for  the  colonies  began  with  the  ancient 
intolerance.  This  motive  was  variously  expressed,  sometimes  in 
a  brutal  manner,  again  with  a  milder  accent,  but  it  was  essen- 
tially universal.  At  the  time  the  Federal  union  was  formed, 
religious  freedom  or  at  least  the  understanding  that  the  law 
had  no  right  to  dictate  religious  beliefs,  was  well  established. 
Since  then, the  development  of  this  quality  has  been  continued 
until  it  has  so  far  penetrated  the  minds  of  men  that  the  barriers 
of  faith  have  little  effect  in  limiting  social  relations.  Even  the 
ancient  dislike  of  Roman  Catholics  and  Jews  has  nearly  passed 
away;  what  is  left  of  it  relates  rather  to  race  hatreds  than  to 
religious  prejudices.  It  may  fairly  be  claimed  that  the  efface- 
ment  of  sectarian  rancors  is  the  greatest  and  most  unique  accom- 
plishment of  our  people.  It  is  evident  that  this  gain  has  also 


to  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

been  due  to  the  fundamental  belief  of  our  people  as  to  the  like- 
ness of  men  to  one  another. 

The  ideal  of  public  education,  like  the  many  other  elements 
of  American  quality,  came  to  us  from  the  mother  country. 
Except,  however,  hi  the  fancies  of  idealists  the  projects  of  instruc- 
tion which  were  developed  in  the  Old  World  were  not  intended 
to  apply  to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  but  to  a  chosen  few. 
Although  in  the  several  colonies  the  motive  which  led  to  the 
development  of  educational  systems  differed  much  in  intensity, 
it  appears  in  some  degree  to  have  existed  in  all,  and  to  have  been 
active  in  the  minds  of  the  hardest  pressed  of  their  frontiersmen. 
Thus,  with  the  first  settlers  of  Kentucky,  who  were  facing  the 
trials  and  perils  of  an  unknown  wilderness,  we  find  among  the 
brief  proceedings  of  then-  first  parliament,  held  in  1775  under  a 
tree,  a  provision  for  the  establishment  of  a  school.  Another  of 
these  memorable  enactments  provided  for  the  suppression  of 
profane  swearing;  yet  another  for  the  improvement  of  the  breed 
of  horses — all  of  which  goes  to  show  how  the  ideal  and  the  prac- 
tical went  together  in  the  minds  of  our  pioneers,  whether  they 
were  of  Massachusetts  Bay  or  of  the  Virginia  plantations. 

Beginning  doubtfully  in  the  colonial  period,  the  ideal  of  public 
education  has  grown  with  the  growth  of  the  fundamental  con- 
cept of  democracy,  that  of  the  essential  likeness  of  men,  and 
with  the  sympathetic  bond  which  this  view  of  life  creates,  until 
it  is  one  of  the  most  characteristic  elements  of  the  quality  of  our 
people.  It  has  commanded  a  share  of  devotion  such  as  has  been 
given  to  no  other  feature  of  our  public  life.  It  has  so  far  entered 
into  our  hearts  that  the  greediest  of  fortune  seekers  may  be 
said  to  dream  of  founding  schools.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  this 
desire  that  the  youth  be  adequately  trained,  has  little  relation 
to  the  economic  results  of  such  training.  So  far  from  desiring 
that  the  end  to  be  attained  shall  be  instruction  in  crafts  or  pro- 
fessions, the  intent  of  our  people  has  ever  been  that  their  schools 
shall  lead  toward  culture;  to  enlargement  rather  than  to  more 
immediate  profit;  to  the  quality  of  the  citizen  rather  than  to 
that  of  the  artisan.  It  has,  indeed,  been  difficult  to  obtain  from 
public  money  or  from  private  gifts  the  means  imperatively 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  n 

demanded  for  instruction  in  applied  science.  It  is  in  the  char- 
acter of  the  educational  system  which  has  been  developed  in 
this  country  that  we  find  the  most  indisputable  evidence  as  to 
the  essential  quality  of  the  American  man.  Seen  in  his  money- 
hunting  form,  he  seems  to  the  ordinary  observer  as  devoid  of  all 
ideals  as  was  the  Indian  he  has  replaced.  Considered  in  the  light 
of  his  lofty  devotion  to  the  interests  of  the  unborn,  we  gain 
another  and  better  view  of  his  complicated  nature.  It  may  be 
granted  that  these  schools  are  in  many  ways  most  imperfect, 
but  the  concept  on  which  they  are  founded  and  the  devotion 
with  which  they  have  been  supported  tell  much  of  American 
quality. 

Looking  at  the  social  organization  of  this  country  in  a  broad 
way,  we  may  note  another  feature,  exhibited  in  very  legible 
facts,  which  deserves  our  attention.  This  is  the  ease  with  which 
this  society  has  taken  in,  and,  as  we  may  say,  assimilated  a 
vast  body  of  very  foreign  people,  very  generally  converting  them 
or  their  immediate  descendants  into  characteristic  Englishmen 
of  the  American  variety.  To  see  the  nature  of  this  accomplish- 
ment, we  should  first  note  that  in  the  fifteen  decades  or  so  of 
colonial  life  our  people  had  a  chance  to  shape  their  society  with 
relatively  little  disturbing  invasions  from  other  than  English 
countries.  The  Dutch  colonists,  then,  were  near  kinsmen  to  the 
Palatinate  Germans  of  Pennsylvania,  and  those  of  North  Caro- 
lina, though  more  remote,  were  akin  in  race  and  religion  and 
bound  to  the  English  people  by  the  memory  of  the  help  lent 
them  in  their  extremity;  as  were,  also,  the  Huguenot  French. 
Perhaps  nine-tenths  of  the  folk  at  the  beginning  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary War  were  of  English  stock,  and  the  remainder  no  hind- 
rance to  the  prevailing  race.  It  is  evident  that  these  colonies 
had  attained  to  a  social  organization  which  was  singularly 
efficient  in  making  a  common  serviceable  product  out  of  the 
odds  and  ends  of  humanity  that  immigration  began  to  bring  to 
the  new  nation  in  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century.  For 
near  a  hundred  years  the  tide  of  foreigners  has  poured  into  the 
United  States  with  increasing  volume.  To  many  good  observers 
it  has  appeared  impossible  that  grave  changes  in  the  quality  of 


12  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

the  country  should  not  be  brought  about  by  this  invasion.  Yet 
this  material,  so  far  as  it  is  of  European  origin,  has  been  effec- 
tively, if  not  completely,  Americanized. 

It  is  true  there  has  been  no  considerable  adoption  of  the 
aborigines  into  the  commonwealth,  but  this  failure  is  due  to  the 
nature  of  the  Indian.  It  is  also  true  that  the  adjustment  of  the 
African  is  yet  to  be  brought  about,  but  there  is  some  reason  to 
believe  that  it  may  be  accomplished.  But,  so  far  as  the  progress 
of  our  own  race  is  concerned,  the  entrance  of  foreigners  into  our 
life,  while  here  and  there  highly  disadvantageous,  has  not  been 
disastrous.  In  one  or  two  generations,  even  where  they  retain, 
as  hi  the  case  of  the  Pennsylvania  Germans,  their  native  speech 
and  customs,  they  are,  in  all  important  regards,  completely; 
naturalized.  This  swift  digestion  of  the  millions  from  countries 
of  a  spirit  very  alien  to  its  own,  indicates  what  we  may  term  the 
organic  intensity  of  American  society;  in  other  words,  the 
eminently  political  quality  of  the  association.  Into  this  invisible, 
intangible,  yet  most  real,  social  whole  the  ardent  quality  of  its 
citizens  so  enters  that  it  can  quickly  efface  the  imprint  of  the 
ages  upon  those  who  come  to  it  from  foreign  lands,  and  stamp 
them  as  its  own. 

It  has  been  the  purpose  of  this  writing  to  consider  only  those 
elements  of  American  quality  of  which  we  have  evidence  in 
recorded  or  evident  facts.  Only  by  such  limitation  can  we  avoid 
those  highly  romantic  speculations  as  to  the  character  of  our  folk 
which  so  fill  the  pages  of  would-be  observers  from  abroad.  In 
summing  up  the  story,  it  seems  not  unreasonable  to  consider 
what  is  to  be  the  future  of  the  evidently  novel  type  of  English- 
man; we  might,  indeed,  term  him  this  spiritually  new  variety  of 
man.  It  is  clear  that  his  most  eminent  quality  consists  in  his 
detachment  from  the  control  of  the  past,  his  self-sufficiency  in 
the  better  sense  of  the  term.  He  has  learned  to  feel,  beyond 
others  of  his  kind,  the  value  of  his  individuality.  It  is,  perhaps, 
as  a  reflection  of  this  sense  that  he  places  a  like  high  rating  on 
his  neighbor.  He  feels  the  bond  of  human  brotherhood  in  a 
curiously  intense  degree.  As  all  the  cooperative  work  of  man 
depends  upon  this  sense  of  human  kinship,  his  large  measure  of 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  13 

it  should  carry  the  American  far — in  just  what  direction  it  is 
not  easy  to  foretell. 

It  requires  no  analysis  to  see  that  the  fundamental  judgment 
of  democracy,  that  of  the  essential  likeness  of  men,  though  a 
truth  of  vast  import,  is  but  a  half  truth.  True  for  the  primary 
qualities  which  should  determine  the  rights  of  all,  it  is  pro- 
foundly untrue  as  regards  those  secondary  features  of  the  intel- 
ligence which  give  to  human  minds  a  range  and  variety  of  capa- 
city really  greater  than  the  differences  in  the  frames  of  men. 
An  apparent  consequence  of  this  excessive  idea  of  common 
likeness  in  his  kind,  is  the  comparative  absence  of  critical  ability 
in  the  American  people.  In  a  large  sense  of  the  term,  criticism 
rests  upon  a  conception  of  the  very  great  difference  of  one  indi- 
vidual from  another.  As  applied  to  life,  it  leads  to  an  under- 
standing of  its  vast  complication,  of  its  far-reaching  inter- 
dependencies,  of  its  splendors  and  its  shames.  In  the  field  of 
morals,  it  teaches  that  there  are  herds  and  leaders;  that  men 
have  won  the  heights  because  they  knew  their  prophets,  or 
have  gone  to  the  deep  because  they  knew  them  not. 

It  is  evident  that  the  path  on  which  this  America-shaping 
and  America-shaped  man  has  journeyed  separates  him  from  the 
critical  state  of  mind.  Yet  he  has  so  prospered  in  his  journey  on 
it,  has  gained  such  a  measure  of  will  and  discernment,  that  the 
critic  would  not  really  know  his  cautious  trade  if  he  ventured  to 
forecast  his  limits.  The  most  reasonable  judgment  concerning 
this  essentially  new  form  of  strong  man  is,  that  on  this  deep  and 
broad  foundation  of  his  sympathies  and  understandings  he  will, 
in  time,  build  all  that  his  friendly  critics  could  wish  him  of 
enlargement. 


i4  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

AMERICAN  CHARACTER1 

BRANDER  MATTHEWS 

[Brander  Matthews  (1852 )  was  born  in  New  Orleans,  Louisiana, 

but  early  in  life  went  to  New  York  to  live.  After  a  brief  experience  with 
law,  he  turned  to  literature  in  which  he  distinguished  himself  as  a  writer 
of  fiction  and  criticism.  Since  1892  he  has  been  a  professor  in  the  English 
department  of  Columbia  University.  The  discussion  of  American  character, 
which  is  here  given,  supplements  the  selection  from  Shaler  in  approaching 
the  matter  from  a  somewhat  different  angle.  It  was  originally  an  address 
delivered  on  several  academic  occasions.] 


In  a  volume  recording  a  series  of  talks  with  Tolstoi,  published 
by  a  French  writer  in  the  final  months  of  1904,  we  are  told  that 
the  Russian  novelist  thought  the  Dukhobors  had  attained  to  a 
perfected  life,  hi  that  they  were  simple,  free  from  envy,  wrath, 
and  ambition,  detesting  violence,  refraining  from  theft  and 
murder,  and  seeking  ever  to  do  good.  Then  the  Parisian  inter- 
viewer asked  which  of  the  peoples  of  the  world  seemed  most 
remote  from  the  perfection  to  which  the  Dukhobors  had 
elevated  themselves;  and  when  Tolstoi  returned  that  he  had 
given  no  thought  to  this  question,  the  French  correspondent 
suggested  that  we  Americans  deserved  to  be  held  up  to  scorn 
as  the  least  worthy  of  nations. 

The  tolerant  Tolstoi  asked  his  visitor  why  he  thought  so  ill 
of  us;  and  the  journalist  of  Paris  then  put  forth  the  opinion  that 
we  Americans  are  "  a  people  terribly  practical,  avid  of  pleasure, 
systematically  hostile  to  all  idealism.  The  ambition  of  the 
American's  heart,  the  passion  of  his  life,  is  money;  and  it  is 
rather  a  delight  in  the  conquest  and  possession  of  money  than 
in  the  use  of  it.  The  Americans  ignore  the  arts;  they  despise 
disinterested  beauty.  And,  now,  moreover,  they  are  imperialists. 
They  could  have  remained  peaceful  without  danger  to  their 
national  existence;  but  they  had  to  have  a  fleet  and  an  army. 

iprom  The  American  of  Ike  Future  and  Other  Essays.  (Copyright,  1909,  Charles  Scrib- 
ner's  Sons.)  Reprinted  by  permission. 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  15 

They  set  out  after  Spain  and  attacked  her;  and  now  they  begin 
to  defy  Europe.  Is  there  not  something  scandalous  in  this 
revelation  of  the  conquering  appetite  in  a  new  people  with  no 
hereditary  predisposition  toward  war?" 

It  is  to  the  credit  of  the  French  correspondent  that,  after 
setting  down  this  fervid  arraignment,  he  was  honest  enough  to 
record  Tolstoi's  dissent.  But  although  he  dissented,  the  great 
Russian  expressed  little  surprise  at  the  virulence  of  this  diatribe. 
No  doubt  it  voiced  an  opinion  familiarized  to  him  of  late  by  many 
a  newspaper  of  France  and  of  Germany.  Fortunately  for  us, 
the  assertion  that  foreign  nations  are  a  contemporaneous 
posterity  is  not  quite  true.  Yet  the  opinion  of  foreigners,  even 
when  most  at  fault,  must  have  its  value  for  us  as  a  useful  cor- 
rective of  conceit.  We  ought  to  be  proud  of  our  country;  but  we 
need  not  be  vain  about  it.  Indeed,  it  would  be  difficult  for  the 
most  patriotic  of  us  to  find  any  satisfaction  in  the  figure  of  the 
typical  American  which  apparently  exists  in  the  mind  of  most 
Europeans,  and  which  seems  to  be  a  composite  photograph  of 
the  backwoodsman  of  Cooper,  the  negro  of  Mrs.  Stowe,  and 
the  Mississippi  river-folk  of  Mark  Twain,  modified,  perhaps,  by 
more  vivid  memories  of  Buffalo  Bill's  Wild  West.  Surely  this  is 
a  strange  monster;  and  we  need  not  wonder  that  foreigners 
feel  toward  it  as  Voltaire  felt  toward  the  prophet  Habakkuk, 
whom  he  declared  to  be  "capable  of  anything." 

It  has  seemed  advisable  to  quote  here  what  the  Parisian 
journalist  said  of  us,  not  because  he  himself  is  a  person  of  con- 
sequence, indeed,  he  is  so  obscure  that  there  is  no  need  even  to 
mention  his  name,  but  because  he  has  had  the  courage  to 
attempt  what  Burke  declared  to  be  impossible — to  draw  an 
indictment  against  a  whole  nation.  It  would  be  easy  to  retort 
on  him  in  kind,  for,  unfortunately, — and  to  the  grief  of  all  her 
friends, — France  has  laid  herself  open  to  accusations  as  sweep- 
ing and  as  violent.  It  would  be  easy  to  dismiss  the  man  himself 
as  one  whose  outlook  on  the  world  is  so  narrow  that  it  seems  to 
be  little  more  than  what  he  can  get  through  a  chance  slit  in  the 
wall  of  his  own  self-sufficiency.  It  would  be  easy  to  answer  him 
in  either  of  these  fashions,  but  what  is  easy  is  rarely  worth  while; 


16  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

and  it  is  wiser  to  weigh  what  he  said  and  to  see  if  we  cannot  find 
our  profit  in  it. 

Sifting  the  essential  charges  from  out  the  mass  of  his  malev- 
olent accusation,  we  find  this  Frenchman  alleging,  first,  that 
we  Americans  care  chiefly  for  making  money;  second,  that  we 
are  hostile  to  art  and  to  all  forms  of  beauty;  and  thirdly,  that 
we  are  devoid  of  ideals.  These  three  allegations  may  well  be 
considered,  one  by  one,  beginning  with  the  assertion  that  we  are 
mere  money-makers. 

n 

Now,  in  so  far  as  this  Frenchman's  belief  is  but  an  exaggera- 
tion of  the  saying  of  Napoleon's,  that  the  English  were  a  nation 
of  shopkeepers,  we  need  not  wince,  for  the  Emperor  of  the  French 
found  to  his  cost  that  those  same  English  shopkeepers  had  a 
stout  stomach  for  fighting.  Nor  need  we  regret  that  we  can  keep 
shop  profitably,  in  these  days  when  the  doors  of  the  bankers' 
vaults  are  the  real  gates  of  the  Temple  of  Janus,  war  being  im- 
possible until  they  open.  There  is  no  reason  for  alarm  or  for 
apology  so  long  as  our  shopkeeping  does  not  cramp  our  muscle 
or  curb  our  spirit,  for,  as  Bacon  declared  three  centuries  ago, 
"walled  towns,  stored  arsenals  and  armories,  goodly  races  of 
horse,  chariots  of  war,  elephants,  ordnance,  artillery  and  the 
like,  all  this  is  but  a  sheep  in  a  lion's  skin,  except  the  breed 
and  disposition  of  the  people  be  stout  and  warlike." 

Even  the  hostile  French  traveler  did  not  accuse  us  of  any 
flabbiness  of  fiber;  indeed,  he  declaimed  especially  against  our 
"conquering  appetite,"  which  seemed  to  him  scandalous  "in 
a  new  people  with  no  hereditary  predisposition  toward  war." 
But  here  he  fell  into  a  common  blunder;  the  United  States  may 
be  a  new  nation — although,  as  a  fact,  the  stars-and-stripes  is 
now  older  than  the  tricolor  of  France,  the  union-jack  of  Great 
Britain,  and  the  standards  of  those  newcomers  among  the  nations, 
Italy  and  Germany — the  United  States  may  be  a  new  nation, 
but  the  people  here  have  had  as  many  ancestors  as  the  popula- 
tion of  any  other  country.  The  people  here,  moreover,  have 
"a  hereditary  predisposition  toward  war,"  or  at  least  toward 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  17 

adventure,  since  they  are,  every  man  of  them,  descended  from 
some  European  more  venturesome  than  his  fellows,  readier  to 
risk  the  perils  of  the  western  ocean  and  bolder  to  front  the  un- 
known dangers  of  an  unknown  land.  The  warlike  temper,  the 
aggressiveness,  the  imperialistic  sentiment — these  are  in  us  no 
new  development  of  unexpected  ambition;  and  they  ought  not 
to  surprise  anyone  familiar  with  the  way  in  which  our  forefathers 
grasped  this  Atlantic  coast  first,  then  thrust  themselves  across 
the  Alleghanies,  spread  abroad  to  the  Mississippi,  and  reached 
out  at  last  to  the  Rockies  and  to  the  Pacific.  The  lust  of  adven- 
ture may  be  dangerous,  but  it  is  no  new  thing;  it  is  in  our  blood, 
and  we  must  reckon  with  it. 

Perhaps  it  is  because  "the  breed  and  disposition  of  the 
people"  is  "stout  and  warlike"  that  our  shopkeeping  has  been 
successful  enough  to  awaken  envious  admiration  among  other 
races  whose  energy  may  have  been  relaxed  of  late.  After  all, 
the  arts  of  war  and  the  arts  of  peace  are  not  so  unlike;  and  in 
either  a  triumph  can  be  won  only  by  an  imagination  strong 
enough  to  foresee  and  to  divine  what  is  hidden  from  the  weakling. 
We  are  a  trading  community,  after  all  and  above  all,  even  if  we 
come  of  fighting  stock.  We  are  a  trading  community,  just  as 
Athens  was,  and  Venice  and  Florence.  And  like  the  men  of  these 
earlier  commonwealths,  the  men  of  the  United  States  are  try- 
ing to  make  money.  They  are  striving  to  make  money,  not 
solely  to  amass  riches,  but  partly  because  having  money  is  the 
outward  and  visible  sign  of  success — because  it  is  the  most 
obvious  measure  of  accomplishment. 

In  his  talk  with  Tolstoi,  our  French  critic  revealed  an  un- 
expected insight  when  he  asserted  that  the  passion  of  American 
life  was  not  so  much  the  use  of  money  as  a  delight  in  the  conquest 
of  it.  Many  an  American  man  of  affairs  would  admit  without 
hesitation  that  he  would  rather  make  half  a  million  dollars  than 
inherit  a  million.  It  is  the  process  he  enjoys,  rather  than  the 
result;  it  is  the  tough  tussle  in  the  open  market  which  gives  him 
the  keenest  pleasure,  and  not  the  idle  contemplation  of  wealth 
safely  stored  away.  He  girds  himself  for  battle  and  fights  for  his 
own  hand;  he  is  the  son  and  the  grandson  of  the  stalwart  adven- 
B 


i8  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

turers  who  came  from  the  Old  World  to  face  the  chances  of  the 
new.  This  is  why  he  is  unwilling  to  retire  as  men  are  wont  to 
do  hi  Europe  when  their  fortunes  are  made.  Merely  to  have 
money  does  not  greatly  delight  him — although  he  would  regret 
not  having  it;  but  what  does  delight  him  unceasingly  is  the  fun 
of  making  it. 

The  money  itself  often  he  does  not  know  what  to  do  with; 
and  he  can  find  no  more  selfish  use  for  it  than  to  give  it  away. 
He  seems  to  recognize  that  his  making  it  was  in  some  measure 
due  to  the  unconscious  assistance  of  the  community  as  a  whole; 
and  he  feels  it  his  duty  to  do  something  for  the  people  among 
whom  he  lives.  It  must  be  noted  that  the  people  themselves  also 
expect  this  from  him;  they  expect  him  sooner  or  later  to  pay  his 
footing.  As  a  result  of  this  pressure  of  public  opinion  and  of  his 
own  lack  of  interest  in  money  itself,  he  gives  freely.  In  time  he 
comes  to  find  pleasure  in  this  as  well ;  and  he  applies  his  business 
sagacity  to  his  benefactions.  Nothing  is  more  characteristic  of 
modern  American  life  than  this  pouring  out  of  private  wealth 
for  public  service.  Nothing  remotely  resembling  it  is  to  be  seen 
now  in  any  country  of  the  Old  World;  and  not  even  in  Athens 
in  its  noblest  days  was  there  a  larger-handed  lavishness  of  the 
individual  for  the  benefit  of  the  community. 

Again,  in  no  country  of  the  Old  World  is  the  prestige  of  wealth 
less  powerful  than  it  is  here.  This,  of  course,  the  foreigner  fails 
to  perceive;  he  does  not  discover  that  it  is  not  the  man  who 
happens  to  possess  money  that  we  regard  with  admiration  but 
the  man  who  is  making  money,  and  thereby  proving  his  efficiency 
and  indirectly  benefiting  the  community.  To  many  it  may 
sound  like  an  insufferable  paradox  to  assert  that  nowhere  in  the 
civilized  world  today  is  money  itself  of  less  weight  than  here  in 
the  United  States;  but  the  broader  his  opportunity  the  more 
likely  is  an  honest  observer  to  come  to  this  unexpected  conclu- 
sion. Fortunes  are  made  in  a  day  almost,  and  they  may  fade 
away  in  a  night;  as  the  Yankee  proverb  put  it  pithily,  "It's 
only  three  generations  from  shirt-sleeves  to  shirt-sleeves." 
Wealth  is  likely  to  lack  something  of  its  glamor  in  a  land  where 
well-being  is  widely  diffused  and  where  a  large  proportion  of 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  19 

the  population  have  either  had  a  fortune  and  lost  it  or  else 
expect  to  gain  one  in  the  immediate  future. 

Probably  also  there  is  no  country  which  now  contains  more 
men  who  do  not  greatly  care  for  large  gains  and  who  have  gladly 
given  up  money-making  for  some  other  occupation  they  found 
more  profitable  for  themselves.  These  are  the  men  like  Thoreau 
— in  whose  W 'olden,  now  half  a  century  old,  we  can  find  an  em- 
phatic declaration  of  all  the  latest  doctrines  of  the  simple  life. 
We  have  all  heard  of  Agassiz, — best  of  Americans,  even  though 
he  was  born  in  another  republic, — how  he  repelled  the  proffer 
of  large  terms  for  a  series  of  lectures,  with  the  answer  that  he  had 
no  time  to  make  money.  Closely  akin  was  the  reply  of  a  famous 
machinist  in  response  to  an  inquiry  as  to  what  he  had  been  doing, 
— to  the  effect  that  he  had  accomplished  nothing  of  late, — "we 
have  just  been  building  engines  and  making  money,  and  I'm 
about  tired  of  it."  There  are  not  a  few  men  today  in  these  toil- 
ing United  States  who  hold  with  Ben  Jonson  that  "money  never 
made  any  man  rich, — but  his  mind." 

But  while  this  is  true,  while  there  are  some  men  among  us 
who  care  little  for  money,  and  while  there  are  many  who  care 
chiefly  for  the  making  of  it,  ready  to  share  it  when  made  with 
their  fellow-citizens,  candor  compels  the  admission  that  there  are 
also  not  a  few  who  are  greedy  and  grasping,  selfish  and  shame- 
less, and  who  stand  forward,  conspicuous  and  unscrupulous,  as 
if  to  justify  to  the  full  the  aspersions  which  foreigners  cast  upon 
us.  Although  these  men  manage  for  the  most  part  to  keep  within 
the  letter  of  the  law,  their  morality  is  that  of  the  wrecker  and  of 
the  pirate.  It  is  a  symptom  of  health  in  the  body  politic  that  the 
proposal  has  been  made  to  inflict  social  ostracism  upon  the  crim- 
inal rich.  We  need  to  stiffen  our  conscience  and  to  set  up  a 
loftier  standard  of  social  intercourse,  refusing  to  fellowship  with 
the  men  who  make  their  money  by  overriding  the  law  or  by 
underminmg  it — just  as  we  should  have  declined  the  friendship 
of  Captain  Kidd  laden  down  with  stolen  treasure. 

In  the  immediate  future  these  men  will  be  made  to  feel  that 
they  are  under  the  ban  of  public  opinion.  One  sign  of  an  acuter 
sensitiveness  is  the  recent  outcry  against  the  acceptance  of 


so  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

"tainted  money"  for  the  support  of  good  works.  Although  it  is 
wise  always  to  give  a  good  deed  the  credit  of  a  good  motive,  yet 
it  is  impossible  sometimes  not  to  suspect  that  certain  large 
gifts  have  an  aspect  of  "conscience  money."  Some  of  them 
seem  to  be  the  result  of  a  desire  to  divert  public  attention  from 
the  evil  way  in  which  the  money  was  made  to  the  nobler 
manner  in  which  it  is  spent.  They  appear  to  be  the  attempt 
of  a  social  outlaw  to  buy  his  peace  with  the  community.  Appar- 
ently there  are  rich  men  among  us,  who,  having  sold  their  honor 
for  a  price,  would  now  gladly  give  up  the  half  of  their  fortunes 
to  get  it  back. 

Candor  compels  the  admission  also  that  by  the  side  of  the 
criminal  rich  there  exists  the  less  noxious  but  more  offensive 
class  of  the  idle  rich,  who  lead  lives  of  wasteful  luxury  and  of 
empty  excitement.  When  the  French  reporter  who  talked  with 
Tolstoi  called  us  Americans  "avid  of  pleasure"  it  was  this  little 
group  he  had  in  mind,  as  he  may  have  seen  the  members  of  it 
splurging  about  in  Paris,  squandering  and  self-advertising. 
Although  these  idle  rich  now  exhibit  themselves  most  openly  and 
to  least  advantage  in  Paris  and  in  London,  their  foolish  doings 
are  recorded  superabundantly  in  our  own  newspapers ;  and  their 
demoralizing  influence  is  spread  abroad.  The  snobbish  report 
of  their  misguided  attempts  at  amusement  may  even  be  a  source 
of  danger  in  that  it  seems  to  recognize  a  false  standard  of  social 
success  or  in  that  it  may  excite  a  miserable  ambition  to  emulate 
these  pitiful  frivolities.  But  there  is  no  need  of  delaying  longer 
over  the  idle  rich;  they  are  only  a  few,  and  they  have  doomed 
themselves  to  destruction,,  since  it  is  an  inexorable  fact  that  those 
who  break  the  laws  of  nature  can  have  no  hope  of  executive 
clemency. 

"Patience  a  little;  learn  to  wait, 
Years  are  long  on  the  clock  of  fate." 

m 

The  second  charge  which  the  wandering  Parisian  journalist 
brought  against  us  was  that  we  ignore  the  arts  and  that  we 
despise  disinterested  beauty.  Here  again  the  answer  that  is 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  21 

easiest  is  not  altogether  satisfactory.  There  is  no  difficulty  in 
declaring  that  there  are  American  artists,  both  painters  and 
sculptors,  who  have  gained  the  most  cordial  appreciation  in 
Paris  itself,  or  in  drawing  attention  to  the  fact  that  certain  of 
the  minor  arts — that  of  the  silversmith,  for  one,  and  for  another, 
that  of  the  glass-blower  and  the  glass-cutter — flourish  in  the 
United  States  at  least  as  freely  as  they  do  anywhere  else,  while 
the  art  of  designing  in  stained  glass  has  had  a  new  birth  here, 
which  has  given  it  a  vigorous  vitality  lacking  in  Europe  since 
the  Middle  Ages.  It  would  not  be  hard  to  show  that  our  American 
architects  are  now  undertaking  to  solve  new  problems  wholly 
unknown  to  the  builders  of  Europe,  and  that  they  are  often 
succeeding  in  this  grapple  with  unprecedented  difficulty.  Nor 
would  it  take  long  to  draw  up  a  list  of  the  concerted  efforts  of 
certain  of  our  cities  to  make  themselves  more  worthy  and  more 
sightly  with  parks  well  planned  and  with  public  buildings  well 
proportioned  and  appropriately  decorated.  We  might  even 
invoke  the  memory  of  the  evanescent  loveliness  of  the  White 
City  that  graced  the  shores  of  Lake  Michigan  a  few  years  ago; 
and  we  might  draw  attention  again  to  the  Library  of  Congress, 
a  later  effort  of  the  allied  arts  of  the  architect,  the  sculptor,  and 
the  painter. 

But  however  full  of  high  hope  for  the  future  we  may  esteem 
these  several  instances  of  our  reaching  out  for  beauty,  we  must 
admit — if  we  are  honest  with  ourselves — that  they  are  all  more 
or  less  exceptional,  and  that  to  offset  this  list  of  artistic  achieve- 
ments the  Devil's  Advocate  could  bring  forward  a  damning 
catalogue  of  crimes  against  good  taste  which  would  go  far  to  prove 
that  the  feeling  for  beauty  is  dead  here  in  America  and  also  the 
desire  for  it.  The  Devil's  Advocate  would  bid  us  consider  the 
flaring  and  often  vulgar  advertisements  that  disfigure  our 
highways,  the  barbaric  ineptness  of  many  of  our  public  buildings, 
the  squalor  of  the  outskirts  of  our  towns  and  villages,  the 
hideousness  and  horror  of  the  slums  in  most  of  our  cities,  the 
negligent  toleration  of  dirt  and  disorder  in  our  public  convey- 
ances, and  many  another  pitiable  deficiency  of  our  civilization 
present  in  the  minds  of  all  of  us. 


22  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

The  sole  retort  possible  is  a  plea  of  confession  and  avoidance, 
coupled  with  a  promise  of  reformation.  These  evils  are  evident 
and  they  cannot  be  denied.  But  they  are  less  evident  today 
than  they  were  yesterday;  and  we  may  honestly  hope  that  they 
will  be  less  evident  tomorrow.  The  bare  fact  that  they  have  been 
observed  warrants  the  belief  that  unceasing  effort  will  be  made 
to  do  away  with  them.  Once  aroused,  public  opinion  will  work 
its  will  in  due  season.  And  here  occasion  serves  to  deny  boldly 
the  justice  of  a  part  of  the  accusation  which  the  French  reporter 
brought  against  us.  It  may  be  true  that  we  "ignore  the  arts" — 
although  this  is  an  obvious  overstatement  of  the  case;  but  it  is 
not  true  that  we  "despise  beauty."  However  ignorant  the 
American  people  may  be  as  a  whole,  they  are  in  no  sense  hostile 
toward  art — as  certain  other  peoples  seem  to  be.  On  the  con- 
trary, they  welcome  it;  with  all  their  ignorance,  they  are  anxious 
to  understand  it;  they  are  pathetically  eager  for  it.  They  are  so 
desirous  of  it  that  they  want  it  in  a  hurry,  only  too  often  to  find 
themselves  put  off  with  an  empty  imitation.  But  the  desire  itself 
is  indisputable;  and  its  accomplishment  is  likely  to  be  helped 
along  by  the  constant  commingling  here  of  peoples  from  various 
other  stocks  than  the  Anglo-Saxon,  since  the  mixture  of  races 
tends  always  to  a  swifter  artistic  development. 

It  is  well  to  probe  deeper  into  the  question  and  to  face  the 
fact  that  not  only  in  the  arts  but  also  in  the  sciences  we  are  not 
doing  all  that  may  fairly  be  expected  of  us.  Athens  was  a  trad- 
ing city  as  New  York  is,  but  New  York  has  had  no  Sophocles  and 
no  Phidias.  Florence  and  Venice  were  towns  whose  merchants 
were  princes,  but  no  American  city  has  yet  brought  forth  a 
Giotto,  a  Dante,  a  Titian.  It  is  now  nearly  threescore  years 
and  ten  since  Emerson  delivered  his  address  on  the  "American 
Scholar,"  which  has  well  been  styled  our  intellectual  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  and  in  which  he  expressed  the  hope 
that  "perhaps  the  time  is  already  come  .  .  .  when  the  sluggard 
intellect  of  this  continent  will  look  from  under  its  iron  lids  and 
fulfil  the  postponed  expectation  of  the  world  with  something  better 
than  the  exertions  of  a  mechanical  skill."  Nearly  seventy  years 
ago  was  this  prophecy  uttered  which  still  echoes  unaccomplished. 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  23 

In  the  nineteenth  century,  in  which  we  came  to  maturity 
as  a  nation,  no  one  of  the  chief  leaders  of  art,  even  including 
literature  in  its  broadest  aspects,  and  no  one  of  the  chief  leaders 
in  science,  was  native  to  our  country.  Perhaps  we  might  claim 
that  Webster  was  one  of  the  world's  greatest  orators  and  that 
Parkman  was  one  of  the  world's  greatest  historians;  but  prob- 
ably the  experts  outside  of  the  United  States  would  be  found 
unprepared  and  unwilling  to  admit  either  claim,  however  likely 
it  may  be  to  win  acceptance  in  the  future.  Lincoln  is  indis- 
putably one  of  the  world's  greatest  statesmen;  and  his  fame  is 
now  firmly  established  throughout  the  whole  of  civilization. 
But  this  is  all  we  can  assert;  and  we  cannot  deny  that  we  have 
given  birth  to  very  few  indeed  of  the  foremost  poets,  dramatists, 
novelists,  painters,  sculptors,  architects  or  scientific  discoverers 
of  the  last  hundred  years. 

Alfred  Russell  Wallace,  whose  renown  is  linked  with  Darwin's 
and  whose  competence  as  a  critic  of  scientific  advance  is  beyond 
dispute,  has  declared  that  the  nineteenth  century  was  the  most 
wonderful  of  all  since  the  world  began.  He  asserts  that  the 
scientific  achievements  of  the  last  hundred  years,  both  in  the 
discovery  of  general  principles  and  in  their  practical  application, 
exceed  in  number  the  sum  total  of  the  scientific  achievements  to 
be  credited  to  all  the  centuries  that  went  before.  He  considers, 
first  of  all,  the  practical  applications,  which  made  the  aspect  of 
civilization  in  1900  differ  in  a  thousand  ways  from  what  it  had 
been  in  1801.  He  names  a  dozen  of  these  practical  applications: 
railways,  steam  navigation,  the  electric  telegraph,  the  telephone, 
friction-matches,  gas-lighting,  electric-lighting,  the  phonograph, 
the  Roentgen  rays,  spectrum  analysis,  anesthetics,  and  anti- 
septics. It  is  with  pride  that  an  American  can  check  off  not  a  few 
of  these  utilities  as  being  due  wholly  or  in  large  part  to  the  in- 
genuity of  one  or  another  of  his  countrymen. 

But  his  pride  has  a  fall  when  Wallace  draws  up  a  second  list, 
not  of  mere  inventions  but  of  those  fundamental  discoveries,  of 
those  fecundating  theories  underlying  all  practical  applications 
and  making  them  possible,  of  those  principles  "which  have 
extended  our  knowledge  or  widened  our  conceptions  of  the  uni- 


24  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

verse."  Of  these  he  catalogues  twelve;  and  we  are  pained  to  find 
that  no  American  has  had  an  important  share  in  the  establish- 
ment of  any  of  these  broad  generalizations.  He  may  have  added 
a  little  here  and  there,  but  no  single  one  of  all  the  twelve  dis- 
coveries is  mainly  to  be  credited  to  any  American.  It  seems  as 
if  our  French  critic  was  not  so  far  out  when  he  asserted  that  we 
were  "terribly  practical."  In  the  application  of  principles,  in 
the  devising  of  new  methods,  our  share  was  larger  than  that  of 
any  other  nation.  In  the  working  out  of  the  stimulating  prin- 
ciples themselves,  our  share  was  less  than  "a  younger  brother's 
portion." 

It  is  only  fair  to  say,  however,  that  even  though  we  may  not 
have  brought  forth  a  chief  leader  of  art  or  of  science  to  adorn 
the  wonderful  century,  there  are  other  evidences  of  our  practi- 
cal sagacity  than  those  set  down  by  Wallace,  evidences 
more  favorable  and  of  better  augury  for  our  future.  We 
derived  our  language  and  our  laws,  our  public  justice  and  our 
representative  government  from  our  English  ancestors,  as  we 
derived  from  the  Dutch  our  religious  toleration  and  perhaps 
also  our  large  freedom  of  educational  opportunity.  In  our  time 
we  have  set  an  example  to  others  and  helped  along  the  progress 
of  the  world.  President  Eliot  holds  that  we  have  made  five 
important  contributions  to  the  advancement  of  civilization. 
First  of  all,  we  have  done  more  than  any  other  people  to  further 
peace-keeping  and  to  substitute  legal  arbitration  for  the  brute 
conflict  of  war.  Second,  we  have  set  a  splendid  example  of  the 
broadest  religious  toleration — even  though  Holland  had  first 
shown  us  how.  Thirdly,  we  have  made  evident  the  wisdom  of 
universal  manhood  suffrage.  Fourthly,  by  our  welcoming  of 
newcomers  from  all  parts  of  the  earth,  we  have  proved  that  men 
belonging  to  a  great  variety  of  races  are  fit  for  political  freedom. 
Finally,  we  have  succeeded  in  diffusing  material  well-being 
among  the  whole  population  to  an  extent  without  parallel  in 
any  other  country  in  the  world. 

These  five  American  contributions  to  civilization  are  all  of 
them  the  result  of  the  practical  side  of  the  American  character. 
They  may  even  seem  commonplace  as  compared  with  the  con- 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  25 

quering  exploits  of  some  other  races.  But  they  are  more  than 
merely  practical;  they  are  all  essentially  moral.  As  President 
Eliot  insists,  they  are  "triumphs  of  reason,  enterprise,  courage, 
faith  and  justice  over  passion,  selfishness,  inertness,  timidity, 
and  distrust.  Beneath  each  of  these  developments  there  lies  a 
strong  ethical  sentiment,  a  strenuous  moral  and  social  purpose. 
It  is  for  such  work  that  multitudinous  democracies  are  fit." 

IV 

A  "strong  ethical  sentiment,"  and  a  "strenuous  moral 
purpose"  cannot  flourish  unless  they  are  deeply  rooted  to  ideal- 
ism. And  here  we  find  an  adequate  answer  to  the  third  asser- 
tion of  Tolstoi's  visitor,  who  maintained  that  we  are  "hostile  to 
all  idealism."  Our  idealism  may  be  of  a  practical  sort,  but  it  is 
idealism  none  the  less.  Emerson  was  an  idealist,  although  he 
was  also  a  thrifty  Yankee.  Lincoln  was  an  idealist,  even  if  he 
was  also  a  practical  politician,  an  opportunist,  knowing  where  he 
wanted  to  go,  but  never  crossing  a  bridge  before  he  came  to  it. 
Emerson  and  Lincoln  had  ever  a  firm  grip  on  the  facts  of  life; 
each  of  them  kept  his  gaze  fixed  on  the  stars — and  he  also  kept 
his  feet  firm  on  the  soil. 

There  is  a  sham  idealism,  boastful  and  shabby,  which  stares 
at  the  moon  and  stumbles  in  the  mud,  as  Shelley  and  Poe 
stumbled.  But  the  basis  of  the  highest  genius  is  always  a  broad 
common  sense.  Shakspere  and  Moliere  were  held  in  esteem  by 
their  comrades  for  their  understanding  of  affairs;  and  they 
each  of  them  had  money  out  at  interest.  Sophocles  was  entrusted 
with  command  in  battle;  and  Goethe  was  the  shrewdest  of  the 
Grand  Duke's  counselors.  The  idealism  of  Shakspere  and  of 
Moliere,  of  Sophocles  and  of  Goethe,  is  like  that  of  Emerson  and 
of  Lincoln;  it  is  unfailingly  practical.  And  thereby  it  is  sharply 
set  apart  from  the  aristocratic  idealism  of  Plato  and  of  Renan, 
of  Ruskin  and  of  Nietzsche,  which  is  founded  on  obvious  self- 
esteem  and  which  is  sustained  by  arrogant  and  inexhaustible 
egotism.  True  idealism  is  not  only  practical,  it  is  also  liberal 
and  tolerant. 


26  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

Perhaps  it  might  seem  to  be  claiming  too  much  to  insist  on 
certain  points  of  similarity  between  us  and  the  Greeks  of  old. 
The  points  of  dissimilarity  are  only  too  evident  to  most  of  us; 
and  yet  there  is  a  likeness  as  well  as  an  unlikeness.  Professor 
Butcher  has  recently  asserted  that  "no  people  was  ever  less 
detached  from  the  practical  affairs  of  life"  than  the  Greeks, 
"less  insensible  to  outward  utility;  yet  they  regarded  prosperity 
as  a  means,  never  as  an  end.  The  unquiet  spirit  of  gain  did  not 
take  possession  of  their  souls.  Shrewd  traders  and  merchants, 
they  were  yet  idealists.  They  did  not  lose  sight  of  the  higher  and 
distinctively  human  amis  which  give  life  its  significance." 
It  will  be  well  for  us  if  this  can  be  said  of  our  civilization  two 
thousand  years  after  its  day  is  done;  and  it  is  for  us  to  make  sure 
that  "the  unquiet  spirit  of  gain"  shall  not  take  possession  of  our 
souls.  It  is  for  us  also  to  rise  to  the  attitude  of  the  Greeks, 
among  whom,  as  Professor  Butcher  points  out,  "money  lavished 
on  personal  enjoyment  was  counted  vulgar,  oriental,  inhuman." 

There  is  comfort  in  the  memory  of  Lincoln  and  of  those  whose 
death  on  the  field  of  Gettysburg  he  commemorated.  The  men 
who  there  gave  up  their  lives  that  the  country  might  live,  had 
answered  to  the  call  of  patriotism,  which  is  one  of  the  sublimest 
images  of  idealism.  There  is  comfort  also  in  the  recollection  of 
Emerson,  and  in  the  fact  that  for  many  of  the  middle  years  of 
the  nineteenth  century  he  was  .the  most  popular  of  lecturers, 
with  an  unfading  attractiveness  to  the  plain  people,  perhaps, 
because,  in  Lowell's  fine  phrase,  he  "kept  constantly  burning  the 
beacon  of  an  ideal  life  above  the  lower  region  of  turmoil."  There 
is  comfort  again  in  the  knowledge  that  idealism  is  one  manifesta- 
tion of  imagination,  and  that  imagination  itself  is  but  an  intenser 
form  of  energy.  That  we  have  energy  and  to  spare,  no  one  denies ; 
and  we  may  reckon  him  a  nearsighted  observer  who  does  not  see 
also  that  we  have  our  full  share  of  imagination  even  though  it 
has  not  yet  expressed  itself  in  the  loftiest  regions  of  art  and  of 
science.  The  outlook  is  hopeful,  and  it  is  not  true  that 

"We,  like  sentries  are  obliged  to  stand 
In  starless  nights  and  wait  the  appointed  hour." 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  27 

The  foundations  of  our  commonwealth  were  kid  by  the  sturdy 
Elizabethans  who  bore  across  the  ocean  with  them  their  portion 
of  that  imagination  which  in  England  flamed  up  in  rugged  prose 
and  in  superb  and  soaring  verse.  In  two  centuries  and  a  half  the 
sons  of  these  stalwart  Englishmen  have  lost  nothing  of  their 
ability  to  see  visions  and  to  dream  dreams,  and  to  put  solid 
foundations  under  their  castles  in  the  air.  The  flame  may  seem 
to  die  down  for  a  season,  but  it  springs  again  from  the  embers 
most  unexpectedly,  as  it  broke  forth  furiously  in  1861.  There  was 
imagination  at  the  core  of  the  little  war  for  the  freeing  of  Cuba — 
the  very  attack  on  Spain,  which  the  Parisian  journalist  cited  to 
Tolstoi  as  the  proof  of  our  predatory  aggressiveness.  We  said 
that  we  were  going  to  war  for  the  sake  of  the  ill-used  people  in 
the  suffering  island  close  to  our  shores;  we  said  that  we  would  not 
annex  Cuba;  we  did  the  fighting  that  was  needful — and  we  kept 
our  word.  It  is  hard  to  see  how  even  the  most  bitter  of  critics 
can  discover  in  this  anything  selfish. 

There  was  imagination  also  in  the  sudden  stopping  of  all  the 
steam-craft,  of  all  the  railroads,  of  all  the  street-cars,  of  all  the 
incessant  traffic  of  the  whole  nation,  at  the  moment  when  the 
body  of  a  murdered  chief  magistrate  was  lowered  into  the  grave. 
This  pause  in  the  work  of  the  world  was  not  only  touching,  it 
had  a  large  significance  to  anyone  seeking  to  understand  the 
people  of  these  United  States.  It  was  a  testimony  that  the 
Greeks  would  have  appreciated;  it  had  the  bold  simplicity  of  an 
Attic  inscription.  And  we  would  thrill  again  in  sympathetic 
response  if  it  was  in  the  pages  of  Plutarch  that  we  read  the 
record  of  another  instance:  When  the  time  arrived  for  Admiral 
Sampson  to  surrender  the  command  of  the  fleet  he  had  brought 
back  to  Hampton  Roads,  he  came  on  deck  to  meet  there  only 
those  officers  whose  prescribed  duty  required  them  to  take  part 
in  the  farewell  ceremonies  as  set  forth  in  the  regulations.  But 
when  he  went  over  the  side  of  the  flagship  he  found  that  the 
boat  which  was  to  bear  him  ashore  was  manned  by  the  rest 
of  the  officers,  ready  to  row  him  themselves  and  eager  to 
render  this  last  personal  service;  and  then  from  every  other 
ship  of  the  fleet  there  put  out  a  boat,  also  manned  by  officers, 


28  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

to  escort  for  the  last  time  the  commander  whom  they  loved 
and  honored. 

V 

As  another  illustration  of  our  regard  for  the  finer  and  loftier 
aspects  of  life,  consider  our  parks,  set  apart  for  the  use  of  the 
people  by  the  city,  the  state,  and  the  nation.  In  the  cities  of  this 
new  country  the  public  playgrounds  have  had  to  be  made,  the 
most  of  them,  and  at  high  cost — whereas  the  towns  of  the  Old 
World  have  come  into  possession  of  theirs  for  nothing,  more  often 
than  not  inheriting  the  private  recreation-grounds  of  their 
rulers.  And  Europe  has  little  or  nothing  to  show  similar  either 
to  the  reservations  of  certain  states,  like  the  steadily  enlarging 
preserves  in  the  Catskills  and  the  Adirondacks,  or  to  the  ampler 
national  parks,  the  Yellowstone,  the  Yosemite  and  the  Grand 
Canyon  of  the  Colorado,  some  of  them  far  larger  in  area  than  one 
at  least  of  the  original  thirteen  states.  Overcoming  the  pressure 
of  private  greed,  the  people  have  ordained  the  preservation  of 
this  natural  beauty  and  its  protection  for  all  time  under  the 
safe  guardianship  of  the  nation  and  with  free  access  to  all  who 
may  claim  admission  to  enjoy  it. 

In  like  manner  many  of  the  battlefields,  whereon  the  nation 
spent  its  blood  that  it  might  be  what  it  is  and  what  it  hopes  to 
be — these  have  been  taken  over  by  the  nation  itself  and  set  apart 
and  kept  as  holy  places  of  pilgrimage.  They  are  free  from  the 
despoiling  hand  of  any  individual  owner.  They  are  adorned  with 
monuments  recording  the  brave  deeds  of  the  men  who  fought 
there.  They  serve  as  constant  reminders  of  the  duty  we  owe 
to  our  country  and  of  the  debt  we  owe  to  those  who  made 
it  and  who  saved  it  for  us.  And  the  loyal  veneration  with 
which  these  fields  of  blood  have  been  cherished  here  in  the 
United  States  finds  no  counterpart  in  any  country  in  Europe, 
no  matter  how  glorious  may  be  its  annals  of  military  prowess. 
Even  Waterloo  is  in  private  hands;  and  its  broad  acres, 
enriched  by  the  bones  of  thousands,  are  tilled  every  year  by 
the  industrious  Belgian  farmers.  Yet  it  was  a  Frenchman, 
Renan,  who  told  us  that  what  welds  men  into  a  nation,  is 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  99 

"the  memory  of  great  deeds  done  in  common  and  the  will  to 
accomplish  yet  more." 

According  to  the  theory  of  the  conservation  of  energy,  there 
ought  to  be  about  as  much  virtue  in  the  world  at  one  time  as  at 
another.  According  to  the  theory  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest, 
there  ought  to  be  a  little  more  now  than  there  was  a  century  ago. 
We  Americans  today  have  our  faults,  and  they  are  abundant 
enough  and  blatant  enough,  and  foreigners  take  care  that  we  shall 
not  overlook  them;  but  our  ethical  standard — however  im- 
perfectly we  may  attain  to  it — is  higher  than  that  of  the  Greeks 
under  Pericles,  of  the  Romans  under  Caesar,  of  the  English 
under  Elizabeth.  It  is  higher  even  than  that  of  our  forefathers 
who  established  our  freedom,  as  those  know  best  who  have  most 
carefully  inquired  into  the  inner  history  of  the  American 
Revolution.  In  nothing  was  our  advance  more  striking  than 
in  the  different  treatment  meted  out  to  the  vanquished 
after  the  Revolution  and  after  the  Civil  War.  When  we  made 
our  peace  with  the  British  the  native  Tories  were  proscribed, 
and  thousands  of  loyalists  left  the  United  States  to  carry 
into  Canada  the  indurated  hatred  of  the  exiled.  But  after 
Lee's  surrender  at  Appomattox,  no  body  of  men,  no  single 
man  indeed,  was  driven  forth  to  live  an  alien  for  the  rest 
of  his  days;  even  though  a  few  might  choose  to  go,  none  were 
compelled. 

This  change  of  conduct  on  the  part  of  those  who  were  victors 
in  the  struggle  was  evidence  of  an  increasing  sympathy.  Not 
only  is  sectionalism  disappearing,  but  with  it  is  departing  the 
feeling  that  really  underlies  it — the  distrust  of  those  who  dwell 
elsewhere  than  where  we  do.  This  distrust  is  common  all  over 
Europe  today.  Here  in  America  it  has  yielded  to  a  friendly 
neighborliness  which  makes  the  family  from  Portland,  Maine, 
soon  find  itself  at  home  in  Portland,  Oregon.  It  is  getting  hard 
for  us  to  hate  anybody — especially  since  we  have  disestablished 
the  devil.  We  are  good-natured  and  easy-going.  Herbert  Spencer 
even  denounced  this  as  our  immediate  danger,  maintaining  that 
we  were  too  good-natured,  too  easy-going,  too  tolerant  of  evil; 
and  he  insisted  that  we  needed  to  strengthen  our  wills  to  protest 


30  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

against  wrong,  to  wrestle  with  it  resolutely,  and  to  overcome  it 
before  it  is  firmly  rooted. 

VI 

We  are  kindly  and  we  are  helpful;  and  we  are  fixed  in  the 
belief  that  somehow  everything  will  work  out  all  right  in  the  long 
run.  But  nothing  will  work  out  all  right  unless  we  so  make  it 
work;  and  excessive  optimism  may  be  as  corrupting  to  the  fiber 
of  the  people  as  "the  Sabbathless  pursuit  of  fortune,"  as  Bacon 
termed  it.  When  Mr.  John  Morley  was  last  in  this  country  he 
seized  swiftly  upon  a  chance  allusion  of  mine  to  this  ingrained 
hopefulness  of  ours.  "Ah,  what  you  call  optimism,"  he  cried, 
"I  call  fatalism."  But  an  optimism  which  is  solidly  based  on  a 
survey  of  the  facts  cannot  fairly  be  termed  fatalism;  and  another 
British  student  of  political  science,  Mr.  James  Bryce,  has  recently 
pointed  out  that  the  intelligent  native  American  has — and  by 
experience  is  justified  in  having — a  firm  conviction  that  the 
majority  of  qualified  voters  are  pretty  sure  to  be  right. 

Then  he  suggested  a  reason  for  the  faith  that  is  in  us,  when  he 
declared  that  no  such  feeling  exists  in  Europe,  since  in  Germany 
the  governing  class  dreads  the  spread  of  socialism,  in  France  the 
republicans  know  that  it  is  not  impossible  that  Monarchism  and 
Clericalism  may  succeed  in  upsetting  the  republic,  while  in  Great 
Britain  each  party  believes  that  the  other  party,  when  it  suc- 
ceeds, succeeds  by  misleading  the  people,  and  neither  party 
supposes  that  the  majority  are  any  more  likely  to  be  right  than 
to  be  wrong. 

Mr.  Morley  and  Mr.  Bryce  were  both  here  in  the  United 
States  in  the  fall  of  1904,  when  we  were  in  the  midst  of  a  presi- 
dential election,  one  of  those  prolonged  national  debates,  creat- 
ing incessant  commotion,  but  invaluable  agents  of  our  political 
education,  in  so  far  as  they  force  us  all  to  take  thought  about  the 
underlying  principles  of  policy  by  which  we  wish  to  see  the 
government  guided.  It  was  while  this  political  campaign  was  at 
its  height  that  the  French  visitor  to  the  Russian  novelist  was 
setting  his  notes  in  order  and  copying  out  his  assertion  that  we 
Americans  were  mere  money-grubbers,  "systematically  hostile 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  31 

to  all  idealism."  If  this  unthinking  Parisian  journalist  had  only 
taken  the  trouble  to  consider  the  addresses  which  the  chief 
speakers  of  the  two  parties  here  in  the  United  States  were  then 
making  to  their  fellow-citizens  in  the  hope  of  winning  votes,  he 
would  have  discovered  that  these  practical  politicians,  trained  to 
perceive  the  subtler  shades  of  popular  feeling,  were  founding  all 
their  arguments  on  the  assumption  that  the  American  people  as 
a  whole  wanted  to  do  right.  He  would  have  seen  that  the  appeal 
of  these  stalwart  partisans  was  rarely  to  prejudice  or  to  race- 
hatred— evil  spirits  that  various  orators  have  sought  to  arouse 
and  to  intensify  in  the  more  recent  political  discussions  of  the 
French  themselves. 

An  examination  of  the  platforms,  of  the  letters  of  the  candi- 
dates, and  of  the  speeches  of  the  more  important  leaders  on  both 
sides  revealed  to  an  American  observer  the  significant  fact  that 
"each  party  tried  to  demonstrate  that  it  was  more  peaceable, 
more  equitable,  more  sincerely  devoted  to  lawful  and  righteous 
behavior  than  the  other;"  and  "the  voter  was  instinctively 
credited  with  loving  peace  and  righteousness,  and  with  being 
stirred  by  sentiments  of  good-will  toward  men."  This  seems  to 
show  that  the  heart  of  the  people  is  sound,  and  that  it  does  not 
throb  in  response  to  ignoble  appeals.  It  seems  to  show  that  there 
is  here  the  desire  ever  to  do  right  and  to  see  right  done,  even  if 
the  will  is  weakened  a  little  by  easy-going  good-nature,  and  even 
if  the  will  fails  at  times  to  stiffen  itself  resolutely  to  make  sure 
that  the  right  shall  prevail. 

"Liberty  hath  a  sharp  and  double  edge  fit  only  to  be  handled 
by  just  and  virtuous  men,"  so  Milton  asserted  long  ago,  adding 
that  "to  the  bad  and  dissolute,  it  becomes  a  mischief  unwieldy 
in  their  own  hands."  Even  if  we  Americans  can  clear  ourselves 
of  being  "bad  and  dissolute,"  we  have  much  to  do  before  we 
may  claim  to  be  "just  and  virtuous,"  Justice  and  virtue  are  not 
to  be  had  for  the  asking;  they  are  the  rewards  of  a  manful  contest 
with  selfishness  and  with  sloth.  They  are  the  results  of  an  honest 
effort  to  think  straight,  and  to  apply  eternal  principles  to  pres- 
ent needs.  Merely  to  feel  is  only  the  beginning;  what  remains 
is  to  think  and  to  act. 


32  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

A  British  historian,  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  who  came  here  to 
spy  out  the  land  three  or  four  years  before  Mr.  Morley  and  Mr. 
Bryce  last  visited  us,  was  struck  by  the  fact — and  by  the  many 
consequences  of  the  fact — that  "America  is  the  only  land  on  earth 
where  caste  has  never  had  a  footing,  nor  has  left  a  trace."  It 
seemed  to  him  that  "vast  numbers  and  the  passion  of  equality 
tend  to  low  averages  in  thought,  in  manners,  and  in  public 
opinion,  which  the  zeal  of  the  devoted  minority  tends  gradually 
to  raise  to  higher  planes  of  thought  and  conduct."  He  believed 
that  we  should  solve  our  problems  one  by  one  because  "the  zeal 
for  learning,  justice  and  humanity"  lies  deep  in  the  American 
heart.  Mr.  Harrison  did  not  say  it  in  so  many  words,  but  it  is 
implied  in  what  he  did  say,  that  the  absence  of  caste  and  the 
presence  of  low  averages  in  thought,  in  manners,  and  in  public 
opinion,  impose  a  heavier  task  on  the  devoted  minority,  whose 
duty  it  is  to  keep  alive  the  zeal  for  learning,  justice  and  humanity. 

Which  of  us,  if  haply  the  spirit  moves  him,  may  not  elect 
himself  to  this  devoted  minority?  Why  should  not  we  also,  each 
in  our  own  way,  without  pretence,  without  boastfulness,  without 
bullying,  do  whatsoever  in  us  lies  for  the  attainment  of  justice 
and  of  virtue?  It  is  well  to  be  a  gentleman  and  a  scholar;  but 
after  all  it  is  best  to  be  a  man,  ready  to  do  a  man's  work  in  the 
world.  And  indeed  there  is  no  reason  why  a  gentleman  and  a 
scholar  should  not  also  be  a  man.  He  will  need  to  cherish  what 
Huxley  called  "that  enthusiasm  for  truth,  that  fanaticism  for 
veracity,  which  is  a  greater  possession  than  much  learning,  a 
nobler  gift  than  the  power  of  increasing  knowledge."  He  will 
need  also  to  remember  that 

"Kings  have  their  dynasties — but  not  the  mind; 
Caesar  leaves  other  Caesars  to  succeed, 
But  Wisdom,  dying,  leaves  no  heir  behind." 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  33 


EFFECTS  OF  THE  FRONTIER  UPON 
AMERICAN  CHARACTER1 

FREDERICK  JACKSON  TURNER 

[Frederick  Jackson  Turner  (1861 )  was  born  at  Portage,  Wisconsin. 

After  his  graduation  from  the  University  of  Wisconsin  in  1884,  he  pursued 
historical  studies  at  Johns  Hopkins  University.  Afterward  he  was  appointed 
professor  of  American  history  in  the  University  of  Wisconsin,  and  since  1910 
he  has  held  a  professorship  of  history  at  Harvard.  He  is  regarded  as  one  of 
the  foremost  authorities  on  phases  of  western  history.  This  article  on  the 
effects  of  the  habits  of  pioneer  days  on  American  life  and  character  is  an 
excellent  example  of  the  interesting  and  thorough  way  in  which  the  writer 
discusses  matters  connected  with  western  America.] 

Behind  institutions,  behind  constitutional  forms  and  modi- 
fications, lie  the  vital  forces  that  call  these  organs  into  life  and 
shape  them  to  meet  changing  conditions.  The  peculiarity  of 
American  institutions  is  the  fact  that  they  have  been  compelled 
to  adapt  themselves  to  the  changes  of  an  expanding  people — 
to  the  changes  involved  in  crossing  a  continent,  in  winning  a 
wilderness,  and  in  developing  at  each  area  of  this  progress  out 
of  the  primitive  economic  and  political  conditions  of  the  fron- 
tier into  the  complexity  of  city  life.  Said  Calhoun  in  1817,  "We 
are  great,  and  rapidly — I  was  about  to  say  fearfully — growing!" 
So  saying,  he  touched  the  distinguishing  feature  of  American  life. 
All  people  show  development;  the  germ  theory  of  politics  has 
been  sufficiently  emphasized.  In  the  case  of  most  nations,  how- 
ever, the  development  has  occurred  in  a  limited  area;  and  if  the 
nation  has  expanded,  it  has  met  other  growing  peoples  whom  it 
has  conquered.  But  in  the  case  of  the  United  States  we  have  a 
different  phenomenon.  Limiting  our  attention  to  the  Atlantic 
coast,  we  have  the  familiar  phenomenon  of  the  evolution  of 
institutions  in  a  limited  area,  such  as  the  rise  of  representative 
government;  the  differentiation  of  simple  colonial  governments 
into  complex  organs;  the  progress  from  primitive  industrial 
society,  without  division  of  labor,  up  to  manufacturing  civili- 

JFrom  "The  Significance  of  the  Frontier  in  American  History"  in  the  Fiftk  Year- 
book of  the  National  Herbart  Society.  Reprinted  by  permission. 


34  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

zation.  But  we  have  in  addition  to  this  a  recurrence  of  the  pro- 
cess of  evolution  in  each  western  area  reached  in  the  process  of 
expansion.  Thus,  American  development  has  exhibited  not 
merely  advance  along  a  single  line,  but  a  return  to  primitive 
conditions  on  a  continually  advancing  frontier  line,  and  a  new 
development  for  that  area.  American  social  development  has 
been  continually  beginning  over  again  on  the  frontier.  This 
perennial  rebirth,  this  fluidity  of  American  life,  this  expansion 
westward  with  its  new  opportunities,  its  continuous  touch  with 
the  simplicity  of  primitive  society,  furnish  the  forces  dominating 
American  character.  The  true  point  of  view  in  the  history  of 
this  nation  is  not  the  Atlantic  coast:  it  is  the  great  West.  Even 
the  slavery  struggle,  which  is  made  so  exclusive  an  object 
of  attention  by  some  historians,  occupies  its  important  place 
in  American  history  because  of  its  relation  to  westward 
expansion. 

In  this  advance,  the  frontier  is  the  outer  edge  of  the  wave — 
the  meeting-point  between  savagery  and  civilization.  Much  has 
been  written  about  the  frontier  from  the  point  of  view  of  border 
warfare  and  the  chase,  but  as  a  field  for  the  serious  study  of  the 
economist  and  the  historian  it  has  been  neglected. 

The  American  frontier  is  sharply  distinguished  from  the 
European  frontier — a  fortified  boundary-line  running  through 
dense  populations.  The  most  significant  thing  about  the  Ameri- 
can frontier  is  that  it  lies  at  the  hither  edge  of  free  land.  In  the 
census  reports  it  is  treated  as  the  margin  of  that  settlement 
which  has  a  density  of  two  or  more  to  the  square  mile.  The  term 
is  an  elastic  one,  and  for  our  purposes  does  not  need  sharp  defini- 
tion. We  shall  consider  the  whole  frontier  belt,  including  the 
Indian  country  and  the  outer  margin  of  the  "settled  area"  of 
the  census  reports.  This  paper  will  make  no  attempt  to  treat 
the  subject  exhaustively;  its  aim  is  simply  to  call  attention  to 
the  frontier  as  a  fertile  field  for  investigation,  and  to  suggest 
some  of  the  problems  which  arise  in  connection  with  it. 

In  the  settlement  of  America  we  have  to  observe  how  Euro- 
pean life  entered  the  continent,  and  how  America  modified  and 
developed  that  life  and  reacted  on  Europe.  Our  early  history  is 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  35 

the  history  of  European  germs  developing  in  an  American  en- 
vironment. Too  exclusive  attention  has  been  paid  by  institu- 
tional students  to  the  Germanic  origins,  too  little  to  the  American 
factors.  The  frontier  is  the  line  of  most  rapid  and  effective 
Americanization.  The  wilderness  masters  the  colonist.  It  finds 
him  a  European  in  dress,  industries,  tools,  modes  of  travel,  and 
thought.  It  takes  him  from  the  railroad  car  and  puts  him  in  the 
birch  canoe.  It  strips  off  the  garments  of  civilization  and  arrays 
him  in  the  hunting-shirt  and  moccasin.  It  puts  him  in  the  log- 
cabin  of  the  Cherokee  and  Iroquois  and  runs  an  Indian  palisade 
around  him.  Before  long  he  has  gone  to  planting  Indian  corn 
and  plowing  with  a  sharp  stick;  he  shouts  the  war-cry  and  takes 
the  scalp  in  orthodox  Indian  fashion.  In  short,  at  the  frontier 
the  environment  is  at  first  too  strong  for  the  man.  He  must 
accept  the  conditions  which  it  furnishes,  or  perish,  and  so  he 
fits  himself  into  the  Indian  clearings  and  follows  the  Indian 
trails.  Little  by  little  he  transforms  the  wilderness,  but  the  out- 
come is  not  the  old  Europe,  not  simply  the  development  of 
Germanic  germs,  any  more  than  the  first  phenomenon  was  a 
case  of  reversion  to  the  Germanic  mark.  The  fact  is,  that  here 
is  a  new  product  that  is  American.  At  first,  the  frontier  was  the 
Atlantic  coast.  It  was  the  frontier  of  Europe  in  a  very  real  sense. 
Moving  westward,  the  frontier  became  more  and  more  American. 
As  successive  terminal  moraines  result  from  successive  glacia- 
tions,  so  each  frontier  leaves  its  traces  behind  it,  and  when  it 
becomes  a  settled  area  the  region  still  partakes  of  the  frontier 
characteristics.  Thus  the  advance  of  the  frontier  has  meant  a 
steady  movement  away  from  the  influence  of  Europe,  a  steady 
growth  of  independence  on  American  lines.  And  to  study  this 
advance,  the  men  who  grew  up  under  these  conditions,  and  the 
political,  economic,  and  social  results  of  it,  is  to  study  the  pecu- 
liarly American  part  of  our  history. 

Let  us  then  grasp  the  conception  of  American  society  steadily 
expanding  into  new  areas.  How  important  it  becomes  to  watch 
the  stages,  the  processes,  and  the  results  of  this  advance !  The 
conception  will  be  found  to  revolutionize  our  study  of  American 
history.  .  .  . 


36  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

We  next  inquire  what  were  the  influences  on  the  East  and 
on  the  Old  World.  A  rapid  enumeration  of  some  of  the  more 
noteworthy  effects  is  all  that  I  have  space  for. 

Composite  Nationality 

First,  we  note  that  the  frontier  promoted  the  formation  of  a 
composite  nationality  for  the  American  people.  The  coast  was 
preponderantly  English,  but  the  later  tides  of  continental  im- 
migration flowed  across  to  the  free  lands.  This  was  the  case 
from  the  early  colonial  days.  The  Scotch-Irish  and  the  Pala- 
tine-Germans, or  "Pennsylvania  Dutch,"  furnished  the  dom- 
inant element  in  the  stock  of  the  colonial  frontier.  With  these 
peoples  were  also  the  freed  indented  servants,  or  redemptioners, 
who,  at  the  expiration  of  their  time  of  service,  passed  to  the 
frontier.  Governor  Spotswood,  of  Virginia,  writes,  in  1717, 
"The  inhabitants  of  our  frontiers  are  composed  generally  of 
such  as  have  been  transported  hither  as  servants,  and,  being  out 
of  their  time,  settle  themselves  where  land  is  to  be  taken  up  and 
that  will  produce  the  necessarys  of  life  with  little  labour."  Very 
generally  these  redemptioners  were  of  non-English  stock.  In 
the  crucible  of  the  frontier  the  immigrants  were  Americanized, 
liberated,  and  fused  into  a  mixed  race,  English  in  neither  nation- 
ality nor  characteristics.  The  process  has  gone  on  from  the  early 
days  to  our  own.  Burke  and  other  writers  in  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century  believed  that  Pennsylvania  was  "threatened 
with  the  danger  of  being  wholly  foreign  in  language,  manners, 
and  perhaps  even  inclinations."  The  German  and  Scotch-Irish 
elements  in  the  frontier  of  the  South  were  only  less  great.  In 
the  middle  of  the  present  century  the  German  element  in  Wis- 
consin was  already  so  considerable  that  leading  publicists  looked 
to  the  creation  of  a  German  state  out  of  the  commonwealth  by 
concentrating  their  colonization.  By  the  census  of  1890  South 
Dakota  had  a  percentage  of  persons  of  foreign  parentage  to  total 
population  of  sixty;  Wisconsin,  seventy- three;  Minnesota, 
seventy-five;  and  North  Dakota,  seventy-nine.  Such  examples 
teach  us  to  beware  of  misinterpreting  the  fact  that  there  is  a 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  37 

common  English  speech  in  America  into  a  belief  that  the  stock 
is  also  English. 

Industrial  Independence 

In  another  way  the  advance  of  the  frontier  decreased  our 
dependence  on  England.  The  coast,  particularly  of  the  South, 
lacked  diversified  industries,  and  was  dependent  on  England  for 
the  bulk  of  its  supplies.  In  the  South  there  was  even  a  depend- 
ence on  the  northern  colonies  for  articles  of  food.  Governor 
Glenn,  of  South  Carolina,  writes  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century:  "Our  trade  with  New  York  and  Philadelphia  was  of 
this  sort,  draining  us  of  all  the  little  money  and  bills  we  could 
gather  from  other  places  for  their  bread,  flour,  beer,  hams, 
bacon,  and  other  things  of  their  produce,  all  which,  except  beer, 
our  new  townships  began  to  supply  us  with,  which  are  settled 
with  very  industrious  and  thriving  Germans.  This  no  doubt 
diminishes  the  number  of  shipping  and  the  appearance  of  our 
trade,  but  it  is  far  from  being  a  detriment  to  us."  Before  long 
the  frontier  created  a  demand  for  merchants.  As  it  retreated 
from  the  coast  it  became  less  and  less  possible  for  England  to 
bring  her  supplies  directly  to  the  consumers'  wharves  and  carry 
away  staple  crops,  and  staple  crops  began  to  give  way  to  diver- 
sified agriculture  for  a  time.  The  effect  of  this  phase  of  the  fron- 
tier action  upon  the  northern  section  is  perceived  when  we  realize 
how  the  advance  of  the  frontier  aroused  seaboard  cities  like 
Boston,  New  York,  and  Baltimore  to  engage  in  rivalry  for 
what  Washington  called  "the  extensive  and  valuable  trade  of  a 
rising  empire." 

Effects  on  National  Legislation 

The  legislation  which  most  developed  the  powers  of  the 
national  government,  and  played  the  largest  part  in  its  activity, 
was  conditioned  on  the  frontier.  Writers  have  discussed  the 
subjects  of  tariff,  land,  and  internal  improvement  as  subsidiary 
to  the  slavery  question.  But  when  American  history  comes  to 
be  rightly  viewed  it  will  be  seen  that  the  slavery  question  is  an 
incident.  In  the  period  from  the  end  of  the  first  half  of  the  pres- 


38  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

ent  century  to  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  slavery  rose  to  primary, 
but  far  from  exclusive,  importance.  But  this  does  not  justify 
Dr.  von  Hoist  (to  take  an  example)  in  treating  our  constitutional 
history  in  its  formative  period  down  to  1828  in  a  single  volume, 
giving  six  volumes  chiefly  to  the  history  of  slavery  from  1828  to 
1861,  under  the  title  Constitutional  History  of  the  United  States. 
The  growth  of  nationalism  and  the  evolution  of  American  political 
institutions  were  dependent  on  the  advance  of  the  frontier. 
Even  so  recent  a  writer  as  Rhodes,  in  his  history  of  the  United 
States  since  the  Compromise  of  1850,  has  treated  the  legislation 
called  out  by  the  western  advance  as  incidental  to  the  slavery 
struggle. 

This  is  a  wrong  perspective.  The  pioneer  needed  the  goods 
of  the  coast,  and  so  the  grand  series  of  internal  improvement 
and  railroad  legislation  began,  with  potent  nationalizing  effects. 
Over  internal  improvements  occurred  great  debates,  in  which 
grave  constitutional  questions  were  discussed.  Sectional  group- 
ings appear  in  the  votes,  profoundly  significant  for  the  historian. 
Loose  construction  increased  as  the  nation  marched  westward. 
But  the  West  was  not  content  with  bringing  the  farm  to  the 
factory.  Under  the  lead  of  Clay — "Harry  of  the  West" — pro- 
tective tariffs  were  passed,,  with  the  cry  of  bringing  the  factory 
to  the  farm.  The  disposition  of  the  public  lands  was  a  third 
important  subject  of  national  legislation  influenced  by  the 
frontier. 

Effects  on  Institutions 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  do  more  than  mention  the  fact  that 
the  West  was  a  field  in  which  new  political  institutions  were  to 
be  created.  It  offered  a  wide  opportunity  for  speculative  crea- 
tion and  for  adjustment  of  old  institutions  to  new  conditions. 
The  study  of  the  evolution  of  western  institutions  shows  how 
slight  was  the  proportion  of  actual  theoretic  invention  of  insti- 
tutions; but  there  is  abundance  of  opportunity  for  study  of  the 
sources  of  the  institutions  actually  chosen,  the  causes  of  the 
selection,  the  degree  of  transformation  by  the  new  conditions,  and 
the  new  institutions  actually  produced  by  the  new  environment. 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  39 

The  Public  Domain 

The  public  domain  has  been  a  force  of  profound  importance 
in  the  nationalization  and  development  of  the  government. 
The  effects  of  the  struggle  of  the  landed  and  the  landless  states, 
and  of  the  ordinance  of  1787,  need  no  discussion.  Administra- 
tively the  frontier  called  out  some  of  the  highest  and  most  vital- 
izing activities  of  the  general  government.  The  purchase  of 
Louisiana  was  perhaps  the  constitutional  turning  point  in  the 
history  of  the  republic,  inasmuch  as  it  afforded  both  a  new  area 
for  national  legislation  and  the  occasion  of  the  downfall  of  the 
policy  of  strict  construction.  But  the  purchase  of  Louisiana  was 
called  out  by  frontier  needs  and  demands.  As  frontier  states 
accrued  to  the  Union  the  national  power  grew.  In  a  speech  on 
the  dedication  of  the  Calhoun  monument,  Mr.  Lamar  explained, 
"In  1789  the  states  were  the  creators  of  the  federal  government; 
in  1 86 1  the  federal  government  was  the  creator  of  a  large  major- 
ity of  the  states." 

When  we  consider  the  public  domain  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  sale  and  disposal  of  the  public  lands,  we  are  again  brought 
face  to  face  with  the  frontier.  The  policy  of  the  United  States  in 
dealing  with  its  lands  is  in  sharp  contrast  with  the  European 
system  of  scientific  administration.  Efforts  to  make  this  domain 
a  source  of  revenue,  and  to  withhold  it  from  emigrants  in  order 
that  settlement  might  be  compact,  were  in  vain.  The  jealousy 
and  the  fears  of  the  East  were  powerless  in  the  face  of  the  de- 
mands of  the  frontiersmen.  John  Quincy  Adams  was  obliged  to 
confess:  "My  own  system  of  administration,  which  was  to 
make  the  national  domain  the  inexhaustible  fund  for  progressive 
and  unceasing  internal  improvement,  has  failed."  The  reason 
is  obvious:  a  system  of  administration  was  not  what  the  West 
demanded;  it  wanted  land.  Adams  states  the  situation  as  fol- 
lows: "The  slave-holders  of  the  South  have  bought  the  co- 
operation of  the  western  country  by  the  bribe  of  the  western 
lands,  abandoning  to  the  new  western  states  their  own  propor- 
tion of  the  public  property  and  aiding  them  in  the  design  of 
grasping  all  the  lands  into  their  own  hands.  Thomas  H.  Benton 


40  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

was  the  author  of  this  system,  which  he  brought  forward  as  a 
substitute  for  the  American  system  of  Mr.  Clay,  and  to  supplant 
him  as  the  leading  statesman  of  the  West.  Mr.  Clay,  by  his 
tariff  compromise  with  Mr.  Calhoun,  abandoned  his  own  Ameri- 
can system.  At  the  same  tune  he  brought  forward  a  plan  for 
distributing  among  all  the  states  of  the  Union  the  proceeds  of  the 
sales  of  the  public  lands.  His  bill  for  that  purpose  passed  both 
houses  of  Congress,  but  was  vetoed  by  President  Jackson,  who, 
in  his  annual  message  of  December,  1832,  formally  recommended 
that  all  public  lands  should  be  gratuitously  given  away  to  indi- 
vidual adventurers  and  to  the  states  in  which  the  lands  are 
situated. 

"No  subject,"  said  Henry  Clay,  "which  has  presented  itself 
to  the  present,  or  perhaps  any  preceding,  Congress,  is  of  greater 
magnitude  than  that  of  the  public  lands."  When  we  consider 
the  far-reaching  effects  of  the  government's  land  policy  upon 
political,  economic,  and  social  aspects  of  American  life,  we  are 
disposed  to  agree  with  him.  But  this  legislation  was  framed 
under  frontier  influences,  and  under  the  lead  of  western  states- 
men like  Benton  and  Jackson.  Said  Senator  Scott,  of  Indiana, 
in  1841:  "I  consider  the  preemption  law  merely  declaratory  of 
the  custom  or  common  law  of  the  settlers." 

National  Tendencies  of  the  Frontier 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  legislation  with  regard  to  land,  tariff, 
and  internal  improvements — the  American  system  of  the  nation- 
alizing Whig  party — was  conditioned  on  frontier  ideas  and  needs. 
But  it  was  not  merely  in  legislative  action  that  the  frontier 
worked  against  the  sectionalism  of  the  coast.  The  economic  and 
social  characteristics  of  the  frontier  worked  against  sectionalism. 
The  men  of  the  frontier  had  closer  resemblances  to  the  middle 
region  than  to  either  of  the  other  sections.  Pennsylvania  had 
been  the  seed  plot  of  southern  frontier  emigration,  and  although 
she  passed  on  her  settlers  along  the  Great  Valley  into  the  west 
of  Virginia  and  the  Carolinas,  yet  the  industrial  society  of  these 
southern  frontiersmen  was  always  more  like  that  of  the  middle 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  41 

region  than  like  that  of  the  tidewater  portion  of  the  South, 
which  later  came  to  spread  its  industrial  type  throughout  the 
South. 

The  middle  region,  entered  by  New  York  harbor,  was  an 
open  door  to  all  Europe.  The  tidewater  part  of  the  South 
represented  typical  Englishmen,  modified  by  a  warm  climate  and 
servile  labor,  and  living  in  baronial  fashion  on  great  plantations; 
New  England  stood  for  a  special  English  movement — Puritanism. 
The  middle  region  was  less  English  than  the  other  sections. 
It  had  a  wide  mixture  of  nationalities,  a  varied  society,  the  mixed 
town  and  county  system  of  local  government,  a  varied  economic 
life,  many  religious  sects.  In  short,  it  was  a  region  mediating 
between  New  England  and  the  South,  and  the  East  and  the 
West.  It  represented  the  composite  nationality  which  the  con- 
temporary United  States  exhibits,  that  juxtaposition  of  non- 
English  groups,  occupying  a  valley  or  a  little  settlement,  and 
presenting  reflections  of  the  map  of  Europe  in  their  variety.  It 
was  democratic  and  non-sectional,  if  not  national;  "easy,  toler- 
ant, and  contented;"  rooted  strongly  in  material  prosperity. 
It  was  typical  of  the  modern  United  States.  It  was  least  sec- 
tional, not  only  because  it  lay  between  North  and  South,  but 
also  because  with  no  barriers  to  shut  out  its  frontiers  from  its 
settled  region,  and  with  a  system  of  connecting  waterways,  the 
middle  region  mediated  between  East  and  West  as  well  as  be- 
tween North  and  South.  Thus  it  became  the  typically  Ameri- 
can region.  Even  the  New  Englander,  who  was  shut  out  from 
the  frontier  by  the  middle  region,  tarrying  in  New  York  or 
Pennsylvania  on  his  westward  march,  lost  the  acuteness  of  his 
sectionalism  on  the  way. 

Moreover,  it  must  be  recalled  that  the  western  and  central 
New  England  settler  who  furnished  the  western  movement  was 
not  the  typical  tidewater  New  Englander:  he  was  less  conserva- 
tive and  contented,  more  democratic  and  restless. 

The  spread  of  cotton  culture  into  the  interior  of  the  South 
finally  broke  down  the  contrast  between  the  tidewater  region 
and  the  rest  of  the  South,  and  based  southern  interests  on  slavery. 
Before  this  process  revealed  its  results,  the  western  portion  of 


42  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

the  South,  which  was  akin  to  Pennsylvania  in  stock,  society, 
and  industry,  showed  tendencies  to  fall  away  from  the  faith  of 
the  fathers  into  internal  improvement  legislation  and  national- 
ism. In  the  Virginia  convention  of  1829—30,  called  to  revise  the 
constitution,  Mr.  Leigh,  of  Chesterfield,  one  of  the  tidewater 
counties,  declared: 

"One  of  the  main  causes  of  discontent  which  led  to  this  convention,  that 
which  had  the  strongest  influence  in  overcoming  our  veneration  for  the  work 
of  our  fathers,  which  taught  us  to  contemn  the  sentiments  of  Henry  and 
Mason  and  Pendleton,  which  weaned  us  from  our  reverence  for  the  consti- 
tuted authorities  of  the  state,  was  an  overweening  passion  for  internal  im- 
provement. I  say  this  with  perfect  knowledge,  for  it  has  been  avowed  to 
me  by  gentlemen  from  the  West  over  and  over  again.  And  let  me  tell  the 
gentleman  from  Albemarle  (Mr.  Gordon)  that  it  has  been  another  principal 
object  of  those  who  set  this  ball  of  revolution  in  motion,  to  overturn  the 
doctrine  of  state  rights,  of  which  Virginia  has  been  the  very  pillar,  and  to 
remove  the  barrier  she  has  interposed  to  the  interference  of  the  federal  gov- 
ernment in  that  same  work  of  internal  improvement,  by  so  reorganizing  the 
legislature  that  Virginia,  too,  may  be  hitched  to  the  federal  car." 

It  was  this  nationalizing  tendency  of  the  West  that  trans- 
formed the  democracy  of  Jefferson  into  the  national  republican- 
ism of  Monroe  and  the  democracy  of  Andrew  Jackson.  The 
West  of  the  War  of  1812,  the  West  of  Clay  and  Benton  and  Har- 
rison and  Andrew  Jackson,  shut  off  by  the  Middle  States  and 
the  mountains  from  the  coast  sections,  had  a  solidarity  of  its 
own  with  national  tendencies.  On  the  tide  of  the  Father  of 
Waters,  North  and  South  met  and  mingled  into  a  nation. 
Interstate  migration  went  steadily  on — a  process  of  cross-ferti- 
lization of  ideas  and  institutions.  The  fierce  struggle  of  the  sec- 
tions over  slavery  on  the  western  frontier  does  not  diminish  the 
truth  of  this  statement;  it  proves  the  truth  of  it.  Slavery  was 
a  sectional  trait  that  would  not  down,  but  in  the  West  it  could 
not  remain  sectional.  It  was  the  greatest  of  frontiersmen  who 
declared:  "I  believe  this  government  cannot  endure  perma- 
nently half  slave  and  half  free.  It  will  become  all  of  one  thing  or 
all  of  the  other."  Nothing  works  for  nationalism  like  intercourse 
within  the  nation.  Mobility  of  population  is  death  to  localism, 
and  the  western  frontier  worked  irresistibly  in  unsettling  popu- 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  43 

lation.  The  effects  reached  back  from  the  frontier,  and  affected 
profoundly  the  Atlantic  coast  and  even  the  Old  World. 

Growth  of  Democracy 

But  the  most  important  effect  of  the  frontier  has  been  in  the 
promotion  of  democracy  here  and  in  Europe.  As  has  been 
indicated,  the  frontier  is  productive  of  individualism.  Complex 
society  is  precipitated  by  the  wilderness  into  a  kind  of  primi- 
tive organization  based  on  the  family.  The  tendency  is  anti- 
social. It  produces  antipathy  to  control,  and  particularly  to  any 
direct  control.  The  taxgatherer  is  viewed  as  a  representative  of 
oppression.  Professor  Osgood,  in  an  able  article,1  has  pointed 
out  that  the  frontier  conditions  prevalent  in  the  colonies  are 
important  factors  in  the  explanation  of  the  American  Revolution, 
where  individual  liberty  was  sometimes  confused  with  absence 
of  all  effective  government.  The  same  conditions  aid  in  ex- 
plaining the  difficulty  of  instituting  a  strong  government  in 
the  period  of  the  Confederacy.  The  frontier  individualism  has 
from  the  beginning  promoted  democracy. 

The  frontier  states  that  came  into  the  Union  in  the  first 
quarter  of  a  century  of  its  existence  came  in  with  democratic 
suffrage  provisions,  and  had  reactive  effects  of  the  highest  im- 
portance upon  the  older  states  whose  peoples  were  being  attracted 
there.  An  extension  of  the  franchise  became  essential.  It  was 
western  New  York  that  forced  an  extension  of  suffrage  in  the 
constitutional  convention  of  that  state  in  1821 ;  and  it  was  western 
Virginia  that  compelled  the  tidewater  region  to  put  a  more 
liberal  suffrage  provision  in  the  constitution  framed  in  1830, 
and  to  give  to  the  frontier  region  a  more  nearly  proportionate 
representation  with  the  tidewater  aristocracy.  The  rise  of 
democracy  as  an  effective  force  in  the  nation  came  in  with  west- 
ern preponderance  under  Jackson  and  William  Henry  Harrison, 
and  it  meant  the  triumph  of  the  frontier — with  all  of  its  good 
and  with  all  of  its  evil  element.  An  interesting  illustration  of 

^Political  Science  Quarterly,  vol.  ii,  p.  437;  Sumner,  Alexander  Hamilton,  chaps, 
ii-vii;  Turner,  in  Atlantic  Monthly,  January,  1903.  [Turner's  note.] 


44  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

the  tone  of  frontier  democracy  in  1830  comes  from  the  same 
debates  in  the  Virginia  convention  already  referred  to.  A  repre- 
sentative from  western  Virginia  declared: 

"But,  sir,  it  is  not  the  increase  of  population  in  the  West  which  this 
gentleman  ought  to  fear.  It  is  the  energy  which  the  mountain  breeze  and 
western  habits  impart  to  those  emigrants.  They  are  regenerated,  politically 
I  mean,  sir.  They  soon  become  working  politicians;  and  the  difference,  sir, 
between  a  talking  and  a  working  politician  is  immense.  The  Old  Dominion 
has  long  been  celebrated  for  producing  great  orators;  the  ablest  metaphysi- 
cians in  policy;  men  that  can  split  hairs  in  all  abstruse  questions  of  political 
economy.  But  at  home,  or  when  they  return  from  Congress,  they  have 
negroes  to  fan  them  asleep.  But  a  Pennsylvania,  a  New  York,  an  Ohio,  or 
a  western  Virginia  statesman,  though  far  inferior  in  logic,  metaphysics,  and 
rhetoric  to  an  old  Virginia  statesman,  has  this  advantage,  that  when  he 
returns  home  he  takes  off  his  coat  and  takes  hold  of  the  plow.  This  gives 
him  bone  and  muscle,  sir,  and  preserves  his  republican  principles  pure  and 
uncontaminated." 

So  long  as  free  land  exists,  the  opportunity  for  a  competency 
exists,  and  economic  power  secures  political  power.  But  the 
democracy  born  of  free  land,  strong  in  selfishness  and  individual- 
ism, intolerant  of  administrative  experience  and  education,  and 
pressing  individual  liberty  beyond  its  proper  bounds,  has  its 
dangers  as  well  as  its  benefits.  Individualism  in  America  has 
allowed  a  laxity  in  regard  to  governmental  affairs  which  has 
rendered  possible  the  spoils  system  and  all  the  manifest  evils 
that  follow  from  the  lack  of  a  highly  developed  civic  spirit.  In 
this  connection  may  be  noted  also  the  influence  of  frontier  con- 
ditions in  permitting  inflated  paper  currency  and  wild-cat  bank- 
ing. The  colonial  and  revolutionary  frontier  was  the  region 
whence  emanated  many  of  the  worst  forms  of  paper  currency.1 
The  West  in  the  War  of  1812  repeated  the  phenomenon  on  the 
frontier  of  that  day,  while  the  speculation  and  wild-cat  banking 
of  the  period  of  the  crisis  of  1837  occurred  on  the  new  frontier 
belt  of  the  next  tier  of  states.  Thus  each  one  of  the  periods  of 
paper-money  projects  coincides  with  periods  when  a  new  set  of 
frontier  communities  had  arisen,  and  coincides  in  area  with 

'On  the  relation  of  frontier  conditions  to  Revolutionary  taxation,  see  Sumner, 
Alexander  Hamilton,  chap.  iii.  [Turner's  note.] 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  45 

these  successive  frontiers,  for  the  most  part.  The  recent  radical 
Populist  agitation  is  a  case  in  point.  Many  a  state  that  now 
declines  any  connection  with  the  tenets  of  the  Populists  itself 
adhered  to  such  ideas  in  an  earlier  stage  of  the  development  of 
the  state.  A  primitive  society  can  hardly  be  expected  to  show 
the  appreciation  of  the  complexity  of  business  interests  in  a 
developed  society.  The  continual  recurrence  of  these  areas  of 
paper-money  agitation  is  another  evidence  that  the  frontier  can 
be  isolated  and  studied  as  a  factor  in  American  history  of  the 
highest  importance.  .  .  . 

Intellectual  Traits 

From  the  conditions  of  frontier  life  came  intellectual  traits 
of  profound  importance.  The  works  of  travelers  along  each 
frontier  from  colonial  days  onward  describe  certain  common 
traits,  and  these  traits  have,  while  softening  down,  still  per- 
sisted as  survivals  in  the  place  of  their  origin,  even  when  a 
higher  social  organization  succeeded.  The  result  is  that  to  the 
frontier  the  American  intellect  owes  its  striking  characteristics. 
That  coarseness  and  strength  combined  with  acuteness  and 
inquisitiveness;  that  practical,  inventive  turn  of  mind,  quick 
to  find  expedients;  that  masterful  grasp  of  material  things,  lack- 
ing in  the  artistic,  but  powerful  to  effect  great  ends;  that  rest- 
less, nervous  energy;1  that  dominant  individualism,  working 
for  goo'd  and  for  evil,  and,  withal,  that  buoyancy  and  exuber- 
ance which  come  with  freedom — these  are  traits  of  the  frontier, 
or  traits  called  out  elsewhere  because  of  the  existence  of  the 
frontier.  We  are  not  easily  aware  of  the  deep  influence  of  this 
individualistic  way  of  thinking  upon  our  present  conditions. 
It  persists  in  the  midst  of  a  society  that  has  passed  away  from 
the  conditions  that  occasioned  it.  It  makes  it  difficult  to  secure 
social  regulation  of  business  enterprises  that  are  essentially 

iColonial  travelers  agree  in  remarking  on  the  phlegmatic  characteristics  of  the 
colonists.  It  has  frequently  been  asked  how  such  a  people  could  have  developed  that 
strained  nervous  energy  now  characteristic  of  them.  Cf.  Sumner,  Alexander  Hamilton, 
p.  98,  and  Adams,  History  of  the  United  Stales,  vol.  i,  p.  60;  vol.  ix,  pp.  240,  241.  Ths 
transition  appears  to  become  marked  at  the  close  of  the  War  of  1812,  a  period  when 
interest  centered  upon  the  development  of  the  West,  and  the  West  was  noted  for  rest- 
less energy. — Grund,  Americans,  vol.  ii,  p.  i.  [Turner's  note.] 


46  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

public;  it  is  a  stumbling-block  in  the  way  of  civil-service  reform; 
it  permeates  our  doctrines  of  education;1  but  with  the  passing 
of  the  free  lands  a  vast  extension  of  the  social  tendency  may  be 
expected  in  America. 

Ratzel,  the  well-known  geographer,  has  pointed  out  the  fact 
that  for  centuries  the  great  unoccupied  area  of  America  fur- 
nished to  the  American  spirit  something  of  its  own  largeness.  It 
has  given  a  largeness  of  design  and  an  optimism  to  American 
thought.2  Since  the  days  when  the  fleet  of  Columbus  sailed  into 
the  waters  of  the  New  World,  America  has  been  another  name 
for  opportunity,  and  the  people  of  the  United  States  have  taken 
their  tone  from  the  incessant  expansion  which  has  not  only  been 
open,  but  has  even  been  forced  upon  them.  He  would  be  a  rash 
prophet  who  should  assert  that  the  expansive  character  of  Ameri- 
can life  has  now  entirely  ceased.  Movement  has  been  its  domi- 
nant fact,  and,  unless  this  training  has  no  effect  upon  a  people, 
the  American  energy  will  continually  demand  a  wider  field  for  its 
exercise.3  But  never  again  will  such  gifts  of  free  land  offer  them- 
selves. For  a  moment,  at  the  frontier,  the  bonds  of  custom  are 
broken  and  unrestraint  is  triumphant.  There  is  not  tabula  rasa. 
The  stubborn  American  environment  is  there  with  its  imperious 
summons  to  accept  its  conditions;  the  inherited  ways  of  doing 
things  are  also  there;  and  yet,  in  spite  of  environment,  and  in 
spite  of  custom,  each  frontier  did  indeed  furnish  a  new  field  of 
opportunity,  a  gate  of  escape  from  the  bondage  of  the  past;  and 
freshness,  and  confidence,  and  scorn  of  older  society,  impatience 
of  its  restraints  and  its  ideas,  and  indifference  to  its  lessons  have 
accompanied  the  frontier.  What  the  Mediterranean  Sea  was  to 
the  Greeks,  breaking  the  bond  of  custom,  offering  new  experi- 
ences, calling  out  new  institutions  and  activities,  that,  and 
more,  the  ever-retreating  frontier  has  been  to  the  United  States 
directly,  and  to  the  nations  of  Europe  more  remotely.  And 
now,  four  centuries  from  the  discovery  of  America,  at  the  end 

xSee  the  able  paper  by  Professor  de  Garno  on  "Social  Aspects  of  Moral  Education," 
in  the  Third  Yearbook  of  the  National  Herbart  Society,  1897,  p.  37.  [Turner's  note.] 

_  2See  paper  on  "The  West  as  a  Field  for  Historical  Study,"  in  Report  of  American 
Historical  Association  for  i8g6,  pp.  270-319.    [Turner's  note.] 

'The  commentary  upon  this  sentence — written  in  1803 — lies  in  the  recent  history 
of  Hawaii,  Cuba,  Porto  Rico,  the  Philippines,  and  the  Isthmian  Canal.  [Turner's  note.] 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  47 

of  a  hundred  years  of  life  under  the  Constitution,  the  frontier 
has  gone,  and  with  its  going  has  closed  the  first  period  of  Ameri- 
can history. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  IMMIGRANT  ON  AMERICA1 

WALTER  EDWARD  WEYL 

[Walter  Edward  Weyl  (1873 )  was  born  in  Philadelphia,  Pennsyl- 
vania. After  graduating  from  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  in  1892,  he 
made  a  special  study  of  political  economy  at  Halle,  Berlin,  and  Paris.  He 
has  written  much  on  economic  subjects  and  is  a  statistical  expert  on  com- 
merce and  labor.] 

We  must  not  forget  that  these  men  and  women  who  file 
through  the  narrow  gates  at  Ellis  Island,  hopeful,  confused, 
with  bundles  of  misconceptions  as  heavy  as  the  great  sacks  upon 
their  backs — we  must  not  forget  that  these  simple,  rough- 
handed  people  are  the  ancestors  of  our  descendants,  the  fathers 
and  mothers  of  our  children. 

So  it  has  been  from  the  beginning.  For  a  century  a  swelling 
human  stream  has  poured  across  the  ocean,  fleeing  from  poverty 
in  Europe  to  a  chance  in  America.  Englishman,  Welshman, 
Scotchman,  Irishman;  German,  Swede,  Norwegian,  Dane; 
Jew,  Italian,  Bohemian,  Serb;  Syrian,  Hungarian,  Pole,  Greek — 
one  race  after  another  has  knocked  at  our  doors,  been  given 
admittance,  has  married  us  and  begot  our  children.  We  could 
not  have  told  by  looking  at  them  whether  they  were  to  be  good 
or  bad  progenitors,  for  racially  the  cabin  is  not  above  the  steer- 
age, and  dirt,  like  poverty  and  ignorance,  is  but  skin-deep. 
A  few  hours,  and  the  stain  of  travel  has  left  the  immigrant's 
cheek;  a  few  years,  and  he  loses  the  odor  of  alien  soils;  a  genera- 
tion or  two,  and  these  outlanders  are  irrevocably  our  race,  our 
nation,  our  stock. 

That  stock,  a  little  over  a  century  ago,  was  almost  pure 
British.  True,  Albany  was  Dutch,  and  many  of  the  signs  in  the 
Philadelphia  streets  were  in  the  German  language.  Neverthe- 

iFrom  "New  Americans,"  Harper's  Monthly  Magazine,  vol.  cxxix,  p.  615  (1914). 


48  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

less,  five-sixths  of  all  the  family  names  collected  in  1790  by  the 
census  authorities  were  pure  English,  and  over  nine-tenths 
(90.2  per  cent.)  were  British.  Despite  the  presence  of  Germans, 
Dutch,  French,  and  Negroes,  the  American  was  essentially  an 
Englishman  once  removed,  an  Englishman  stuffed  with  English 
traditions,  prejudices,  and  stubbornnesses,  reading  English 
books,  speaking  English  dialects,  practising  English  law  and 
English  evasions  of  the  law,  and  hating  England  with  a  truly 
English  hatred.  In  all  but  a  political  sense  America  was  still 
one  of  "His  Majesty's  dominions  beyond  the  sea."  Even  after 
immigration  poured  in  upon  us,  the  English  stock  was  strong 
enough  to  impress  upon  the  immigrating  races  its  language, 
laws,  and  customs.  Nevertheless,  the  incoming  millions  pro- 
foundly altered  our  racial  structure.  Today  over  thirty-two 
million  Americans  are  either  foreign-born  or  of  foreign  parentage. 
No  longer  an  Anglo-Saxon  cousin,  America  has  become  the 
most  composite  of  nations. 

We  cannot  help  seeing  that  such  a  vast  transfusion  of  blood 
must  powerfully  affect  the  character  of  the  American.  What  that 
influence  is  to  be,  however,  whether  for  better  or  for  worse,  is  a 
question  more  baffling.  Our  optimists  conceive  the  future  Ameri- 
can, the  child  of  this  infinite  intermarrying,  as  a  glorified,  syn- 
thetical person,  replete  with  the  best  qualities  of  all  component 
races.  He  is  to  combine  the  sturdiness  of  the  Bulgarian  peasant, 
the  poetry  of  the  Pole,  the  vivid  artistic  perceptions  of  the  Ital- 
ian, the  Jew's  intensity,  the  German's  thoroughness,  the  Irish- 
man's verve,  the  tenacity  of  the  Englishman,  with  the  initiative 
and  versatility  of  the  American.  The  pessimist,  on  the  other  hand, 
fears  the  worst.  America,  he  believes,  is  committing  the  un- 
pardonable sin,  is  contracting  a  mesalliance,  grotesque  and 
gigantic.  We  are  diluting  our  blood  with  the  blood  of  lesser 
breeds.  We  are  suffering  adulteration.  The  stamp  upon  the 
coin — the  flag,  the  language,  the  national  sense — remains,  but 
the  silver  is  replaced  by  lead. 

All  of  which  is  singularly  unconvincing.  In  our  own  families, 
the  children  do  not  always  inherit  the  best  qualities  of  father 
and  mother,  and  we  have  no  assurance  that  the  children  of 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  49 

mixed  races  have  this  selective  gift  and  rise  superior  to  their 
parent  stocks.  Nor  do  we  know  that  they  fall  below.  We  hear 
much  concerning  "pure"  races  and  "mongrel"  races.  But  is 
there  in  all  the  world  a  pure  race?  The  Jew,  once  supposed  to 
be  of  Levitical  pureness,  is  now  known  to  be  racially  unorthodox. 
The  Englishman  is  not  pure  Anglo-Saxon;  the  German  is  not 
Teutonic;  the  Russian  is  not  Slav.  To  be  mongrel  may  be  a 
virtue  or  a  vice — we  do  not  know.  The  problem  is  too  subtle, 
too  elusive,  and  we  have  no  approved  receipts  in  this  vast 
eugenic  kitchen.  Intermarrying  will  go  on,  whether  we  like  it 
or  loathe  it,  for  love  laughs  at  racial  barriers,  and  the  maidens 
of  one  nation  look  fair  to  the  youth  of  another.  Let  the  kettle 
boil  and  let  us  hope  for  the  best. 

But  the  newcomer  brings  with  him  more  than  his  potential 
parenthood,  and  he  influences  America  and  the  American  in 
other  ways  than  by  marriage  and  procreation.  He  creates  new 
problems  of  adjustment.  He  enters  into  a  new  environment. 
He  creates  a  new  environment  for  us.  Unconsciously  but  irre- 
sistibly he  transforms  an  America  which  he  does  not  know.  He 
forces  the  native  American  to  change,  to  change  that  he  may 
feel  at  home  in  his  own  home. 

When  we  seek  to  discover  what  is  the  exact  influence  of  the 
immigrant  upon  his  new  environment,  we  are  met  with  difficul- 
ties almost  as  insurmountable  as  those  which  enter  into  the 
problem  of  the  immigrant's  influence  upon  our  common  heredity. 
Social  phenomena  are  difficult  to  isolate.  The  immigrant  is  not 
merely  an  immigrant;  he  is  also  a  wage-earner,  a  city-dweller, 
perhaps  an  illiterate.  Wage-earning,  city-dwelling,  and  illiter- 
acy are  all  contributing  influences.  Your  immigrant  is  a  citizen 
of  the  new  factory,  of  the  great  industrial  state,  within,  yet  almost 
overshadowing,  the  political  state.  Into  each  of  our  problems — 
wages  and  labor,  illiteracy,  crime,  vice,  insanity,  pauperism, 
democracy — the  immigrant  enters. 

There  is  in  all  the  world  no  more  difficult,  no  more  utterly 
bewildering  problem  than  this  of  the  intermingling  of  races. 
Already  thirty  million  immigrants  have  arrived,  of  whom  con- 
siderably over  twenty  millions  have  remained.  To  interpret 

D 


So  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

this  pouring  of  new,  strange  millions  into  the  old,  to  trace  its 
result  upon  the  manners,  the  morals,  the  emotional  and  intel- 
lectual reactions  of  the  Americans,  is  like  searching  out  the  yel- 
low waters  of  the  Missouri  in  the  vast  flood  of  the  lower  Missis- 
sippi. Our  immigrating  races  are  many,  and  they  meet  diverse 
kinds  of  native  Americans  on  varying  planes  and  at  innumerable 
contact  points.  So  complex  is  the  resulting  pattern,  so  multitu- 
dinous are  the  threads  interwoven  into  so  many  perplexing  com- 
binations, that  we  struggle  in  vain  to  unweave  this  weaving. 
At  best  we  can  merely  follow  a  single  color,  noting  its  appear- 
ance here  and  its  reappearance  there,  in  this  vast  and  many- 
hued  tapestry  which  we  call  American  life. 

Fortunately  we  are  not  compelled  to  embark  upon  so  ambi- 
tious a  study.  We  are  here  concerned,  not  with  the  all-inclusive 
question,  "Is  immigration  good  or  bad?"  but  with  the  problem 
of  how  immigration  has  contributed  to  certain  broad  develop- 
ments in  the  character  and  habits  of  the  American,  and  even 
to  this  question  we  must  be  content  with  a  half-answer. 

When  we  compare  the  America  of  today  with  the  America 
of  half  a  century  ago,  certain  differences  stand  out  sharply. 
America  today  is  far  richer.  It  is  also  more  stratified.  Our 
social  gamut  has  been  widened.  There  are  more  vivid  contrasts, 
more  startling  differences,  in  education  and  in  the  general  chances 
of  life.  We  are  less  rural  and  more  urban,  losing  the  virtues  and 
the  vices,  the  excellences  and  the  stupidities,  of  country  life 
and  gaining  those  of  the  city.  We  are  massing  in  our  cities  armies 
of  the  poor  to  take  the  place  of  country  ne'er-do-wells  and  village 
hangers-on.  We  are  more  sophisticated.  We  are  more  lax  and 
less  narrow.  We  have  lost  our  earlier  frugal  simplicity,  and  have 
become  extravagant  and  competitively  lavish.  We  have,  in 
short,  created  a  new  type  of  American,  who  lives  in  the  city, 
reads  newspapers  and  even  books,  bathes  frequently,  travels 
occasionally;  a  man,  fluent  intellectually  and  physically  restless, 
ready  but  not  profound,  intent  upon  success,  not  without  ideal- 
ism, but  somewhat  disillusioned,  pleasure-loving,  hard-working, 
humorous.  At  the  same  time  there  grows  a  sense  of  a  social 
mal-adjustment,  a  sense  of  a  failure  of  America  to  live  up  to 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  51 

expectations,  and  an  intensifying  desire  to  right  a  not  clearly 
perceived  wrong.  There  develops  a  vigorous,  if  somewhat  vague 
and  untrained,  moral  impulse,  an  impulse  based  on  social  rather 
than  individual  ethics,  unesthetic,  democratic,  headlong. 

Although  this  development  might  have  come  about,  in  part 
at  least,  without  immigration,  the  process  has  been  enormously 
accelerated  by  the  arrival  on  our  shores  of  millions  of  Europeans. 
These  men  came  to  make  a  living,  and  they  made  not  only  their 
own  but  other  men's  fortunes.  They  hastened  the  dissolution 
of  old  conditions;  they  undermined  old  standards  by  introducing 
new;  their  very  traditions  facilitated  the  growth  of  that  tra- 
ditionless  quality  of  the  American  mind  which  hastened  our 
material  transformation.  .  .  . 

The  attraction  of  America  penetrates  ever  deeper  into 
Europe,  from  the  maritime  peoples  living  on  the  fringe  of  the 
ocean,  to  the  inland  plains,  and  then  into  somnolent,  winter- 
locked  mountain  villages.  Simultaneously  Europe  changes 
America.  You  can  alter  any  country  if  you  pour  in  enough 
millions.  These  immigrants,  moreover,  are  of  a  character  to 
effect  changes.  America's  attraction  is  not  to  the  good  or  to  the 
bad,  to  the  saint  or  to  the  sinner,  but  to  the  young,  the  aggres- 
sive, the  restless,  the  ambitious.  The  Europeans  in  America  are 
chosen  men,  for  there  is  a  rigorous  selection  at  home  and  a 
rigorous  selection  here,  the  discouraged  and  defeated  returning 
by  the  shipload.  These  immigrating  races  are  virile,  tenacious, 
prolific.  Each  shipload  of  newcomers  carries  to  American  life  an 
impulse  like  the  rapidly  succeeding  explosions  of  a  gasolene 
engine. 

Moreover,  these  immigrants,  peasants  at  home,  become  city- 
dwellers  here.  The  city  is  the  heart  of  our  body  social.  It  is  the 
home  of  education,  amusement,  culture,  crime,  discontent, 
social  contacts — and  power.  The  immigrant,  even  in  the  gutter 
of  the  city,  is  often  nearer  to  the  main  currents  of  our  national 
life  than  is  the  average  resident  of  the  country.  His  children 
are  more  literate,  more  restless,  more  wide-awake. 

With  such  numbers,  such  qualities,  and  such  a  position  within 
the  social  network,  one  might  imagine  that  the  immigrant 


52  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

would  gradually  transform  us  in  his  own  likeness.  But  no  such 
direct  influence  is  visible.  As  a  nation  we  have  not  learned  polite- 
ness, although  we  have  drawn  millions  of  immigrants  from  the 
politest  peoples  in  the  world.  Our  national  irreverence  is  not 
decreased,  but,  on  the  contrary,  is  actually  increased,  by  the 
mass  of  idols,  of  good  old  customs,  memories,  religions,  which 
come  to  us  in  the  steerage.  Nor  is  the  immigrant's  influence  in 
any  way  intentional.  Though  he  hopes  that  America  will  make 
him,  the  immigrant  has  no  presumptuous  thought  of  making 
America.  To  him,  America  is  a  fixed,  unchanging  environmental 
thing,  a  land  to  browse  on. 

This  very  passivity  of  the  newly  arrived  immigrant  is  the 
most  tremendous  of  influences.  The  workman  who  does  not 
join  a  union,  the  citizen  who  sends  his  immature  children  to  the 
factory,  the  man  who  does  not  become  naturalized,  or  who  main- 
tains a  standard  of  living  below  an  inadequate  wage,  such  a  one 
by  contagion  and  pressure  changes  conditions  and  lowers  stand- 
ards all  about  him,  undermining  to  the  extent  of  his  lethargy 
our  entire  social  edifice.  The  aim  of  Americanization  is  to  com- 
bat this  passive  influence.  Two  forces,  like  good  and  evil,  are 
opposed  on  that  long  frontier  line  where  the  immigrant  comes 
into  contact  with  the  older  resident.  The  American,  through 
self-protection,  not  love,  seeks  to  raise  the  immigrant  to  his 
economic  level;  the  immigrant,  through  self -protection,  not 
through  knowledge,  involuntarily  accepts  conditions  which  tend 
to  drag  the  American  down  to  his.  In  this  contest  much  that  we 
ordinarily  account  virtue  is  evil;  much  that  is  ugly  is  good.  The 
immigrant  girl  puts  on  a  corset,  exchanges  her  picturesque  head- 
dress for  a  flowering  monstrosity  of  an  American  hat,  squeezes 
her  honest  peasant's  foot  into  a  narrow,  thin-soled  American 
shoe — and  behold,  it  is  good.  It  is  a  step  toward  assimilation, 
toward  a  more  expensive  if  not  a  more  lovely  standard  of  living. 
It  gives  hostages  to  America.  It  makes  the  frenzied  saving  of 
the  early  days  impossible.  Docility,  abnegation,  and  pecuniary 
abasement  are  not  economic  virtues,  however  highly  they  may 
be  rated  in  another  category. 

In  still  other  ways  this  assimilation  alters  and  limits  the 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  53 

alien's  influence.  Much  is  lost  in  the  process.  The  immigrant 
comes  to  us  laden  with  gifts,  but  we  have  not  the  leisure  to 
take  nor  he  the  opportunity  to  tender.  The  brilliant  native  cos- 
tumes, the  strange,  vibrant  dialects,  the  curious  mental  molds 
are  soon  faded  or  gone.  The  old  religions,  the  old  customs,  the 
traditional  manners,  the  ancient  lace  do  not  survive  the  melting- 
pot.  Assimilation,  however  necessary,  ends  the  charm  and  rare- 
ness of  our  quaint  human  importations. 

For  this  esthetic  degeneration  the  immigrant  must  not  be 
blamed.  To  gain  himself  he  must  lose  himself.  He  must  adopt 
"our  ways."  The  Italian  day  laborer  finds  that  macaroni  and 
lettuce  are  not  a  suitable  diet  for  ten  hours'  work  on  the  subway 
or  the  Catskill  dam.  The  politeness  of  sunny  southern  Europe 
is  at  a  discount  in  our  skurrying,  elbowing  crowds.  The  docility 
of  the  peasant  damns  a  man  irretrievably  in  the  struggle  to  rise, 
and  conservatism  in  gentle,  outlandish  manners  is  impossible  in 
kaleidoscopic  America.  The  immigrant,  therefore,  accepts  our 
standards  wholesale  and  indiscriminately.  He  "goes  the  limit" 
of  assimilation — slang,  clothes,  and  chewing-gum.  He  accom- 
modates himself  quickly  to  that  narrow  fringe  of  America  which 
affects  him  most  immediately.  The  Talmudist  in  Russia  is,  for 
better  or  worse,  no  Talmudist  here:  he  is  a  cloak-presser  or  a  real- 
estate  broker.  The  Greek  shepherd  becomes  an  elevator-boy  or 
a  hazardous  speculator  in  resuscitated  violets.  The  Sicilian 
bootblack  learns  to  charge  ten  cents  for  a  five-cent  shine;  the 
candy-vender  from  Macedonia  haggles  long  before  he  knows  a 
hundred  English  words ;  the  Pole  who  never  has  seen  a  coal-mine 
becomes  adept  at  the  use  of  the  steam-shovel. 

Another  limit  to  the  immigrant's  influence  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  America  to  which  he  adapts  himself  is  the  America 
that  he  first  meets,  the  America  at  the  bottom.  That  bottom 
changes  as  America  changes  from  an  agricultural  to  an  industrial 
nation.  For  the  average  immigrant  there  is  no  longer  a  free 
farm  on  a  western  frontier:  there  is  only  a  job  as  an  unskilled 
or  semi-skilled  workman.  For  that  job  a  knowledge  of  his  letters 
is  not  absolutely  necessary.  Nor  is  a  knowledge  of  English. 
There  are  in  America  today  a  few  millions  of  aliens  who  cannot 


54  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

speak  English  or  read  or  write  their  native  tongue,  and  who, 
from  an  industrial  point  of  view,  are  almost  mere  muscle.  The 
road  from  bottom  to  top  becomes  steeper  and  more  inaccessible. 
Stratification  begins. 

Because  of  his  position  at  the  bottom  of  a  stratified  society, 
the  immigrant — especially  the  recent  immigrant — does  not  exert 
any  large  direct  influence.  Taken  in  the  mass,  he  does  not  run 
our  businesses,  make  our  laws,  write  our  books,  paint  our  pictures, 
preach  to  us,  teach  us  or  prescribe  for  us.  His  indirect  influence, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  increased  rather  than  diminished  by  his 
position  at  the  bottom  of  the  structure.  When  he  moves,  all 
superincumbent  groups  must  of  necessity  shift  their  positions. 
This  indirect  influence  is  manifold.  The  immigration  of  enor- 
mous numbers  of  unskilled  "interchangeable"  laborers,  who  can 
be  moved  about  like  pawns,  standardizes  our  industries,  facili- 
tates the  growth  of  stupendous  business  units,  and  generally 
promotes  plasticity.  The  immigrant,  by  his  mere  presence,  by 
his  mere  readiness  to  be  used,  speeds  us  up ;  he  accelerates  the 
whole  tempo  of  our  industrial  life.  He  changes  completely  "the 
balance  of  power"  in  industry,  politics,  and  social  life  generally. 
The  feverish  speed  of  our  labor,  which  is  so  largely  pathological, 
is  an  index  of  this.  The  arrival  of  ever-fresh  multitudes  adds  to 
the  difficulties  of  securing  a  democratic  control  of  either  industry 
or  politics.  The  presence  of  the  unskilled,  unlettered  immigrant 
excites  the  cupidity  of  men  who  wish  to  make  money  quickly 
and  do  not  care  how.  It  makes  an  essentially  kind-hearted  people 
callous.  Why  save  the  lives  of  "wops"?  What  does  it  matter  if 
our  industry  kills  a  few  thousands  more  or  less,  when,  if  we  wish, 
we  can  get  millions  a  year  from  inexhaustible  Europe?  Immigra- 
tion acts  to  destroy  our  brakes.  It  keeps  us,  as  a  nation,  transi- 
tional. 

Of  course  this  transitional  quality  of  America  was  due  partly 
to  our  virgin  continent.  There  was  always  room  in  the  West;  a 
man  did  not  settle,  but  merely  lighted  on  a  spot,  like  a  migratory 
bird  on  its  southern  journey.  Immigration,  however,  intensified 
and  protracted  this  development.  Each  race  had  to  fight  for  its 
place.  Natives  were  displaced  by  Irish,  who  were  displaced  in 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  55 

turn  by  Germans,  Russians,  Italians,  Portuguese,  Greeks, 
Syrians.  Whole  trades  were  deserted  by  one  nation  and  con- 
quered by  another.  The  peoples  of  eastern  Europe  inundated 
the  Pennsylvania  mining  districts,  displacing  Irish,  English, 
and  Welsh  miners.  The  Irish  street  laborer  disappeared;  the 
Italian  quietly  took  his  shovel.  Russian  Jews  revolutionized  the 
clothing  trade,  driving  out  Germans  as  these  had  driven  out 
native  Americans.  The  old  homes  of  displaced  nations  were 
inhabited  by  new  peoples;  the  old  peoples  were  shoved  up  or 
down,  but,  in  any  case,  out.  Cities,  factories,  neighborhoods 
changed  with  startling  rapidity.  Connecticut  schools,  once 
attended  by  descendants  of  the  Pilgrims,  became  overfilled  with 
dark-eyed  Italian  lads  and  tow-headed  Slavs.  Protestant 
churches  were  stranded  in  Catholic  or  Jewish  neighborhoods. 
America  changed  rapidly,  feverishly.  That  peculiar  quiet  rest- 
lessness of  America,  the  calm  fear  with  which  we  search  with 
the  tail  of  our  eye  to  avoid  swirling  automobiles,  the  rush  and 
recklessness  of  our  life,  were  increased  by  the  mild,  law-abiding 
people  who  came  to  us  from  abroad. 

There  was  a  time  when  all  these  qualities  were  good,  or  at 
least  had  their  good  features.  So  long  as  we  had  elbow-room  in 
the  West,  so  long  as  we  were  young  and  growing,  with  a  big  con- 
tinent to  make  our  mistakes  in,  even  recklessness  was  a  virtue. 
But  today  America  is  no  longer  elastic,  the  road  from  bottom  to 
top  is  not  so  short  and  not  so  unimpeded  as  it  once  was.  We 
cannot  any  longer  be  sure  that  the  immigrant  will  find  his 
proper  place  in  our  eastern  mills  or  on  our  western  farms  without 
injury  to  others — or  to  himself. 

The  time  has  passed  when  we  exulted  in  the  number  of  grown- 
up men,  bred  at  another  country's  expense,  who  came  to  work 
for  us  and  fertilize  our  soils  with  their  dead  bones.  The  time  has 
passed  when  we  believed  that  mere  numbers  were  all.  Today, 
despite  night  schools,  settlements,  and  a  whole  network  of 
Americanizing  agencies,  we  have  teeming,  polyglot  slums  and 
the  clash  of  race  with  race  in  sweatshop  and  factory,  mine  and 
lumber-camp.  We  have  a  mixture  of  ideals,  a  confusion  of 
standards,  a  conglomeration  of  clashing  views  of  life.  We,  the 


S6  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

many-nationed  nation  of  America,  bring  the  Puritan  tradition, 
a  trifle  anemic  and  thin,  a  little  the  worse  for  disuse.  The  immi- 
grant brings  a  Babel  of  traditions,  an  all  too  plastic  mind,  a 
willingness  to  copy  our  virtues  and  vices,  to  imitate  us  for  better 
or  for  worse.  All  of  which  hampers  and  delays  the  formation  of 
a  national  consciousness. 

From  whatever  point  we  view  the  new  America,  we  cannot 
help  seeing  how  intimately  the  changes  have  been  bound  up 
with  our  immigration,  especially  with  that  of  recent  years.  The 
widening  of  the  social  gamut  becomes  more  significant  when  we 
recall  that  with  unrestricted  immigration  our  poorest  citizens 
are  periodically  recruited  from  the  poor  of  the  poorest  countries 
of  Europe.  Our  differences  in  education,  while  they  have  other 
causes,  are  sharply  accentuated  by  our  enormous  development 
of  university  and  high  schools  at  the  one  end,  and  by  the  increas- 
ing illiteracy  of  our  immigrants  at  the  other.  In  cities  where  there 
are  large  immigrant  populations  we  note  the  beginning  of  a 
change  in  our  attitude  toward  the  public  schools,  toward  uni- 
versal suffrage,  toward  many  of  the  pious,  if  unrealized,  national 
ideals  of  an  earlier  period. 

Fundamentally,  however,  the  essential  fact  about  our  pres- 
ent-day immigration  is  not  that  the  immigrant  has  changed 
(though  that  fact  is  of  great  importance),  but  that  the  America 
to  which  the  immigrant  comes  has  changed  fundamentally  and 
permanently.  And  the  essential  fact  about  the  immigrant's 
effect  on  American  character  is  this,  that  the  gift  of  the  immi- 
grant to  the  nation  is  not  the  qualities  which  he  himself  had  at 
home,  but  the  very  qualities  which  Americans  have  always  had. 
In  other  words,  at  a  time  when  American  industrial,  political, 
and  social  conditions  are  changing,  partly  as  a  result  of  immi- 
gration itself,  the  immigrant  hampers  our  psychological  adjust- 
ment to  such  changes  by  giving  scope  and  exercise  to  old  national 
characteristics  which  should  be  obsolescent. 

America  today  is  in  transition.  We  have  moved  rapidly 
from  one  industrial  world  to  another,  and  this  progress  has 
been  aided  and  stimulated  by  immigration.  The  psychological 
change,  however,  which  should  have  kept  pace  with  this  indus- 


AMERICAN  TRAITS  57 

trial  transition,  has  been  slower  and  less  complete.  It  has  been 
retarded  by  the  very  rapidity  of  our  immigration  and  by  the 
tremendous  educational  tasks  which  that  influx  placed  upon  us. 
The  immigrant  is  a  challenge  to  our  highest  idealism,  but  the 
task  of  Americanizing  the  extra  millions  of  newcomers  has 
hindered  progress  in  the  task  of  democratizing  America. 


PATTERNS    OF    AMERICANISM 

FRANKLIN:    THE  CITIZEN1 

GEORGE  WILLIAM  ALGER 

[George  William  Alger  (1872 )  is  a  lawyer  in  New  York  City.   In 

his  own  activities  as  a  citizen  he  has  taken  great  interest  in  labor  and  child 
labor  matters.  In  this  article,  he  has  in  an  interesting  way  discussed  Ben- 
jamin Franklin  as  a  concrete  example  of  Americanism.] 

It  is  unfortunate  for  the  fame  of  Franklin  that  most  of  us 
form  our  ideas  of  our  great  historical  characters  from  school 
histories.  We  were  introduced  to  him  in  our  youth  and  under 
the  worst  of  auspices.  For  in  that  part  of  the  story  of  the  Revo- 
lution where  each  daily  lesson  is  full  of  exciting  events,  when 
the  great  embattled  farmers  are  chasing  Redcoats  and  killing 
Hessians,  fighting  thrilling  battles  and  doing  those  interesting 
things  which  make  the  story  of  the  Revolution  a  schoolboy's 
romance,  the  music  seems  to  stop  suddenly  and  the  rapidly 
moving  figures  of  our  fighting  fathers  are  swept  ruthlessly  from 
the  stage  and  out  shuffles  an  old  man,  with  a  broad,  shrewd, 
and  homely  face,  queer  glasses,  and  a  head  surmounted  by  an 
atrocious  fur  hat — Benjamin  Franklin. 

How  can  a  boy  see  anything  heroic  in  an  old  man,  no  fighter, 
whose  biography  is  in  a  footnote,  which  does  not  count  in 
examination?  An  old  man,  moreover,  whose  footnote  biography 
generally  contains  nothing  exciting,  or  even  interesting,  except 
the  story  of  his  kite  or  the  ridiculous  figure  he  made  with  his 
three  loaves  of  bread,  one  under  each  arm  and  one  in  his  mouth 
on  his  first  entry  into  Philadelphia. 

Every  American  schoolboy,  as  he  reads  the  history  of  his 
country,  has  born  in  him  an  essentially  dramatic  ambition — 

iFrom  the  American  Magazine,  vol.  vii,  p.  318  (January,  1906). 

S8 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  59 

the  ambition  that  at  some  far-off  day,  in  some  far-off  crisis 
of  his  country's  existence,  he,  too,  may  add  a  thrilling  page  to 
some  schoolboy's  history,  may  do  some  deed  of  daring — like 
mad  Anthony  Wayne  may  carry  some  post  by  storm,  die  gener- 
ously like  Hale  or  De  Kalb,  may  scourge  the  seas  like  Paul 
Jones.  But  what  boy's  ambition  does  the  old  man  in  the  fur 
hat  inspire?  What  schoolboy  knows  that  it  was  really  a  great 
thing  to  finance  the  American  Revolution? 

It  is  precisely  because  he  is  the  great  American  whom  most 
of  us  failed  to  appreciate  in  our  youth — not  entirely  through 
our  fault — that  in  this  month,  which  contains  the  second 
centennial  of  Franklin's  birth,  we  should  in  our  maturer  years 
return  to  a  study  of  one  who  was  perhaps  the  first  great  American 
citizen  and  pay  to  his  memory  a  belated  tribute. 

It  is  fortunate  for  Franklin  that  the  second  centenary  of 
his  birth  falls  as  it  does,  for  we  are  realizing,  year  by  year,  the 
supreme  importance  of  the  things  he  stood  for,  the  supreme 
importance  to  a  country  whose  future  is  to  be  won  through  the 
arts  of  peace  and  not  of  war,  of  his  type  of  citizenship.  We  have 
suffered  from  the  military  ideal  of  citizenship,  for  it  made  and 
makes  the  citizenship  of  peace  seem  dull,  tame,  and  not  worth 
while.  The  country  has  never  lacked  men  who  would  die  for  it. 
Such  danger  as  it  is  in  today  lies  in  its  lack  of  men  willing  to  do 
something  for  it  while  they  are  alive  with  their  skins  not  in 
danger. 

The  newspapers  and  magazines  are  full  of  the  crooked  doings 
of  men  who  are  today  undermining  the  foundations  of  a  govern- 
ment for  which,  in  tunes  of  war,  they  would  carry  a  gun.  Our 
supreme  problem  in  these  days,  when  so  much  is  being  said  of 
corruption  in  office  and  the  corrupting  influences  of  businessmen 
on  public  life,  the  supreme  problem  is,  how  shall  we  make  the 
ideal  of  citizenship,  plain  everyday  citizenship — seem  some- 
thing highly  important  and  worth  striving  for?  The  lesson  which 
we  can  learn  from  the  career  of  Franklin  is  the  tremendous, 
permanent  value  of  this  type  of  citizenship. 

In  point  of  time  he  was  the  first  great  American  citizen. 
He  was  widely  and  favorably  known  and  nearing  the  middle  of 


60  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

his  career  before  Washington  was  in  his  teens.  He  was  nearly 
seventy  when  the  crisis  of  the  Revolution  came,  and  when  as 
an  old  man,  full  of  honors  and  years,  feeble  and  afflicted  with 
gout  and  rheumatism,  he  brought  France  to  our  aid  at  the 
critical  day  of  our  struggle  for  independence,  and  secured  the 
funds  which  made  the  success  of  the  Revolution  possible. 

Though  he  was  born  two  hundred  years  ago,  on  the  i7th  of 
January,  and  the  social  conditions  of  his  time  were  so  unlike  our 
own,  there  is  a  marked  similarity  between  Franklin  and  the 
type  of  big  businessmen  of  whom  we  complain  so  bitterly  to- 
day. For  up  to  a  certain  point  his  career  and  his  interests  in 
life  were  curiously  like  not  a  few  of  our  own  great  magnates. 

He  was  born  poor,  had  little  school  education,  and  began 
life  with  an  insatiable  desire  to  improve  himself  and  his  condi- 
tion. Economy  and  frugality  were  his  in  a  marked  degree.  No 
man  ever  lived  who  had  a  greater  notion  of  the  value  of  time. 
Sparks  tells  an  anecdote  illustrating  this,  which  we  have  no 
reason  to  consider  as  merely  a  jest.  Franklin's  father,  like  every 
good  old-time  New  Englander,  said  grace  before  meals  three 
times  a  day.  One  day  when  a  barrel  of  pork  was  received  at 
the  house,  young  Benjamin  earnestly  entreated  his  parent  to 
bless  the  meat  in  the  barrel  and  thereby  save  the  time  spent  on 
blessing  at  each  meal  the  portion  put  on  the  table.  He  worked 
with  enormous  industry.  When  he  set  up  his  printing  shop 
in  Philadelphia  in  partnership  with  Meredith,  it  was  this  in- 
dustry which  gave  the  young  firm  credit.  "For  the  industry  of 
that  Franklin,"  said  Dr.  Baird  at  the  Merchants'  Every  Night 
Club,  "is  superior  to  anything  I  have  ever  seen  of  the  kind. 
I  see  him  still  at  work  when  I  go  from  the  club  and  he  is  at  work 
again  before  his  neighbors  are  out  of  bed." 

He  lived  simply — almost  parsimoniously — and  spent  noth- 
ing on  display.  Generous  though  he  was  to  his  immediate 
relatives,  to  his  friends,  and  to  those  in  distress,  he  was  close  in 
his  ordinary  business  dealings.  He  allowed  himself  few  luxuries 
and  saved  money  rigorously  from  his  youth  up.  No  reader  of 
his  autobiography  can  help  feeling  sympathy  with  his  poor 
London  landlady,  the  widow  in  Duke  Street,  "who  was  so  lame 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  61 

in  her  knees  with  the  gout  and  therefore  seldom  stirred  out  of 
her  room,"  and  who  found  young  Franklin  so  interesting.  He 
found  her  equally  good  company,  but  when  after  patient  search- 
ing he  discovered  a  boarding  place  which  was  thirty-six  cents  a 
week  cheaper,  he  threatened  to  leave  and  she  had  to  "abate 
him"  forty-eight  cents  a  week  to  keep  her  congenial  boarder. 

He  certainly  cared  a  great  deal  about  money.  He  was 
shrewd  and  long-headed  hi  getting  it.  He  believed  in  it  and 
was  forever  writing  about  it,  and  advising  young  tradesmen  on 
"The  Way  to  Wealth"  and  how  to  find  it.  Poor  Richard's 
Almanack  is  a  materialist's  catechism,  full  of  wise  saws  on  the 
saving  of  money  and  the  tangible  advantages  of  industry.  The 
qualities  which  Franklin  possessed,  the  business  shrewdness  and 
foresight,  the  executive  ability  and  the  combination  in  him  of 
industry,  economy  and  endless  patience  would  make  him  a 
multi-millionaire  today.  It  made  him  very  well-to-do  hi  his 
own  time.  He  left  a  fortune  of  over  $150,000. 

At  the  height  of  his  business  career  he  was,  in  his  chosen 
calling,  the  best  as  well  as  the  most  successful  printer  in  the 
Colonies,  earning  annually  four  tunes  as  much  as  his  most 
fortunate  rival.  He  was  editor,  composer,  publisher,  bookbinder, 
stationer;  he  made  lamp-black  and  ink,  dealt  in  rags,  sold  soap 
and  live  geese  feathers  and  "very  good  sack  at  six  shillings  a 
gallon."  He  had  the  best  jobs  of  printing  of  New  Jersey,  Mary- 
land, Pennsylvania,  and  by  partnership  in  Virginia,  New  York, 
the  Carolinas  and  Georgia.  He  published  schoolbooks  and  hand- 
books in  medicine  and  farriery.  Poor  Richard's  Almanack  had 
to  go  to  press  in  October,  so  as  to  be  ready  for  the  New  Year, 
so  great  was  the  demand  for  it.  He  was  postmaster-general 
and  clerk  of  the  Pennsylvania  General  Assembly  and  earned  by 
all  these  separate  irons  in  these  different  fires  $10,000  per  year. 
At  forty-two  he  was  a  free  man,  for  he  had  an  estate  of  $3,500 
per  year.  He  had  earned  leisure,  that  leisure  which  Poor  Richard 
describes  as  "the  tune  for  doing  something  useful.  This  leisure 
the  diligent  man  will  obtain,  the  lazy  man  never." 

Thus  much  has  been  said  of  Franklin  in  his  character  as  a 
businessman,  because  it  is  the  substructure  of  his  character  as  a 


62  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

public  man.  He  was  the  original  American  businessman  in 
public  life.  It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  it  was  while  he  was 
actively  and  laboriously  engaged  in  a  pursuit  which  he  loved, 
that  of  making  money,  he  found  time  to  perform  those  many 
acts  of  wise  citizenship  which  form  the  substantial  foundation 
of  his  later  career  as  a  statesman.  He  could  do  successful 
business  and  still  find  time  for  public  service. 

He  was  particular  about  the  way  of  doing  that  business, 
moreover.  He  was  particular  about  the  way  in  which  he  made 
his  money.  He  was  not  of  that  too  familiar  type  of  big  business- 
men who  square  extortion  and  oppression  by  philanthropy. 
He  took  no  rebates.  When  he  first  started  his  newspaper  in 
Philadelphia,  his  rival  was  Bradford,  who,  in  addition  to  pub- 
lishing a  paper,  was  postmaster-general  of  the  Colonies.  Brad- 
ford used  his  authority  as  postmaster-general  to  practically 
exclude  Franklin's  papers  from  the  mail  by  forbidding  the  post- 
riders  to  carry  them.  Franklin  shortly  after  succeeded  Bradford 
as  postmaster-general.  Here  was  the  opportunity  to  build  a 
monopoly  and  crush  his  old  rival.  But  the  thought  never  seems 
to  have  entered  his  head  that  the  newspaper  business  of  the 
Colonies  belonged  to  him.  He  says  of  Bradford  in  his  attempt 
to  crush  Franklin's  newspaper:  "I  thought  so  meanly  of  him  for 
it  that  when  I  afterward  came  into  his  situation,  I  took  care 
never  to  imitate  him." 

He  believed  hi  fair  competition,  in  freedom  for  others  as  well 
as  himself,  and  cared  more  for  his  personal  independence  in  the 
conduct  of  his  business  than  for  the  business  itself.  The  story 
of  the  sawdust  pudding  should  be  known  in  every  newspaper 
office  in  the  country.  When  he  first  started  his  Gazette,  he  made 
some  free  comments  on  certain  public  officials,  and  some  of  the 
influential  patrons  of  the  paper  resented  it  and  tried  to  stop  it. 
He  invited  them  to  dinner.  When  they  came  they  found  noth- 
ing on  the  table  but  a  pudding  made  of  coarse  meal  and  a  jug 
of  water.  They  sat  down.  Franklin  filled  their  plates  and  then 
his  own  and  proceeded  to  eat  heartily,  but  his  guests  could  not 
swallow  the  stuff.  After  a  few  moments  Franklin  rose,  and, 
looking  at  them,  said  quietly:  "My  friends,  any  man  who  can 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  63 

subsist  on  sawdust  pudding  as  I  can,  needs  no  man's  patronage." 
This  is  what  the  liberty  of  the  press  meant  to  the  first  great 
American  printer. 

There  is  something  humorous  to  us  in  these  days  about  the 
simple-mindedness  of  Franklin's  honesty.  His  autobiography 
affords  us  one  unconscious  example.  When  Braddock  came  over 
in  the  French  and  Indian  War  with  his  British  regulars,  and 
before  he  met  the  historic  disaster  which  cost  him  his  life,  he 
had  great  difficulty  in  getting  horses  and  wagons  to  pull  ordnance 
and  carry  camp  supplies,  and  Franklin  set  about  helping  him  to 
get  the  necessary  transportation.  The  Pennsylvania  farmers 
were  suspicious.  They  did  not  know  Braddock,  they  did  not 
know  Franklin,  and  insisted  on  his  bond  for  the  performance 
of  Braddock's  promises.  There  was  absolutely  no  reason  why 
Franklin  should  give  it,  for  he  was  in  no  sense  an  army  con- 
tractor, but  was  simply  trying  to  be  of  practical  help  in  an 
emergency  in  the  war.  But  he  gave  his  personal  bond  and  ad- 
vanced considerable  sums  from  his  own  funds  to  procure  the 
wagons.  As  everybody  knows,  Braddock  was  defeated  and  the 
wagons  and  horses  were  lost.  The  farmers  came  back  to  Franklin, 
and  he  nearly  had  to  pay  twenty  thousand  pounds,  which  would 
have  ruined  him,  but  a  commission  was  finally  created  to  adjust 
and  pay  the  claims.  As  for  the  cash  advances  he  had  made, 
Braddock's  successor  intimated  that  Franklin  had  probably 
made  enough  "rake  off,"  on  the  transportation  contracts  so 
that  he  could  stand  the  loss  of  his  advances,  and  laughed  in- 
credulously at  him  when  the  honest  printer  declared  indignantly 
that  he  had  not  pocketed  a  farthing.  "I  have  since  learned," 
says  Franklin  in  his  autobiography,  "that  immense  fortunes  are 
often  made  in  such  employments."  What  homespun  simplicity! 
How  curiously,  in  an  age  of  directors,  do  these  words  sound! 
How  remote  and  foreign  seems  the  honest,  wise  old  man's 
innocence  of  "graft"! 

Franklin  never  was  a  rich  man.  The  things  which  he  accom- 
plished, the  permanent  monuments  which  he  left,  were  created, 
not  by  gifts  of  his  money,  but  by  gifts  of  himself.  He  had  an 
extremely  practical  mind.  He  was  always  looking  around  for 


64  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

opportunities  to  do  something  useful,  for  improvements  which 
could  be  made  which  should  be  of  benefit  to  the  public,  and  he 
found  time  to  accomplish  them. 

He  founded  the  first  high  school  of  the  state,  which  before 
his  death  developed  into  the  present  Universtiy  of  Pennsyl- 
vania. It  was  through  his  great  influence  in  supporting  Dr. 
Bond  that  the  Philadelphia  Hospital  was  established.  Through 
the  "Junto,"  the  debating  society  which  he  had  established, 
was  founded  by  his  active  management  the  Philadelphia 
Library,  the  first  circulating  library  in  America  from  which 
books  could  be  taken  to  the  homes  of  the  readers — the  parent 
of  thousands  of  circulating  libraries  all  over  the  land.  These  are 
a  portion  of  the  local  interests  with  which  Franklin's  name  is 
associated.  The  association  of  his  name  with  these  public 
enterprises  should  not  be  understood,  however,  as  meaning 
that  they  were  built  on  his  money,  either  wholly  or  mainly. 
He  never  had  enough  money  for  that.  They  were  founded  on 
his  wise  plans,  on  his  generous  expenditure  of  time,  trouble 
and  thought. 

These  things  were  done  amidst  the  engrossing  demands  of  a 
growing  business  by  a  man  who  made  the  public  business  a 
part  of  his  business,  and  refused  to  allow  his  own  personal 
interests  to  command  all  his  time.  When  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania  proudly  describes  itself  today  as  "founded  by 
Benjamin  Franklin/'  the  word  founded  means  not  cash  but 
character. 

He  invented  a  long  list  of  useful  things  and  sought  no  personal 
gain  from  them.  The  Franklin  stove  which  he  devised,  and 
upon  which  he  refused  to  accept  a  patent,  became  the  standard 
stove  among  our  forefathers.  He  devised  what  the  oculists 
today  call  Franklinic  lenses — bifocal  glasses — combining  in  one 
pair  of  spectacles  long-distance  and  reading  lenses.  He  studied 
the  causes  of  smoky  chimneys  and  how  to  avoid  them,  and 
published  a  pamphlet  on  his  discoveries.  His  electrical  experi- 
ments are  familiar  to  students  of  electricity.  His  discoveries  in 
this  branch  of  knowledge  made  his  name  known,  long  before  the 
Revolution,  in  European  as  well  as  hi  American  scientific 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  65 

societies,  and  long  before  the  war  cloud  grew  black  on  the 
horizon,  the  farmer  and  laborer  in  England  as  well  as  in  America 
read  the  wise  maxims  of  Poor  Richard's  Almanack,  and  knew 
and  respected  its  author. 

He  was  the  first  American  diplomat.  Practically  thirty 
years  of  his  life  were  devoted  to  American  interests  abroad, 
first  as  agent  of  Pennsylvania  carrying  on  a  patient  and  success- 
ful attack  on  the  vested  selfishness  of  the  Penn  Proprietaries 
who  refused  to  permit  their  Pennsylvania  land  to  be  taxed  for 
the  common  benefits  which  they  received  from  the  Colony. 

At  last  the  Revolution  came,  and  at  an  age  when  few  men 
perform  any  work  of  great  importance,  he  rendered  his  services 
in  the  cause  of  American  liberty,  second  only  to  those  of  Wash- 
ington himself.  To  those  who  still  insist  on  considering  history 
as  a  form  of  romantic  drama,  no  contrast  to  the  thrilling  war 
story  of  the  Revolution  can  be  apparently  more  ridiculous  than 
the  story  of  the  financiering  by  which  that  war  was  for  the  most 
part  carried  on.  Congress  had  no  money.  Its  requisitions  on 
the  several  states  were  discounted  or  ignored.  Individual 
patriots  of  means  contributed  heavily.  Franklin  loaned  all  his 
own  ready  money.  Rich  Robert  Morris  gave  all  he  had  and  died 
in  a  poorhouse,  but  the  funds  thus  obtained  were  utterly  in- 
adequate for  the  war.  The  Colonies  were  miserably  poor.  Where, 
indeed,  was  the  money  to  come  from  to  buy  uniforms,  guns, 
provisions,  ships,  and  all  the  various  supplies  of  an  army  and 
navy?  The  answer  which  Congress  finally  hit  upon  was  very 
simple.  They  drew  drafts  on  Franklin.  Without  any  previous 
notice  to  him,  without  any  inquiry  as  to  whether  he  had  funds 
or  could  raise  them,  they  drew  on  him  for  anything  and  every- 
thing which  the  conduct  of  the  war  required.  His  simple  duty 
was  to  find  in  France  somehow  the  funds  to  meet  these  drafts. 
He  did  it. 

He  was  perhaps  the  only  American  who  at  the  time  was 
known  and  respected  for  his  personal  worth  in  continental 
Europe.  He  was  famous  as  scientist  and  philosopher.  He  was  as 
engaging  as  he  was  wise.  With  a  keen  knowledge  of  human 
nature  he  knew  how  to  deal  with  the  French  character.  He  was 
E 


66  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

a  splendid  borrower.  Saddled  as  he  was  with  two  perfectly  use- 
less associates,  who  hampered  him  in  France  and  slandered  him 
at  home,  and  with  practically  no  other  assistance  than  a  six- 
teen-year-old grandson  as  his  secretary,  himself  afflicted  with 
the  infirmities  of  old  age,  he  persuaded  a  nation,  deep  in  financial 
straits,  to  loan  the  struggling  colonies  the  funds  necessary  for 
the  war.  In  the  critical  year  of  the  war  his  diplomacy  obtained 
at  last  from  France  the  recognition  of  American  independence, 
and  the  active  and  open  aid  of  French  arms,  obtained  sixteen 
men-of-war,  4,000  men,  and  last  but  not  least,  $5,000,000, 
nearly  $2,000,000  of  which  was  a  free  gift. 

Well  might  Paul  Jones  name  his  flagship  the  Bonnehomme 
Richard,  for  it  was  the  pseudonym  of  the  man  who  made  his 
career  possible,  who  fitted  out  his  ships  and  found  the  pay  for 
his  sailors. 

But  this  is  no  place  to  trace  in  detail  the  long  story  of  Frank- 
lin's career  of  public  service.  The  record  of  that  service  should, 
however,  not  stand  alone  as  his  claim  on  the  memory  of  pos- 
terity. We  must  not  overlook  the  vast,  almost  tangible  influence 
of  his  plain,  simple,  hard-working  life,  its  struggles,  high  pur- 
poses, its  practical  accomplishments  upon  the  great  artisan 
class  in  which  he  was  born,  on  the  vast  army  of  young  men 
whose  lives  depend  upon  then-  intelligence  applied  through 
their  hands,  working  at  his  own  trade  of  printing,  or  in  the 
other  practical  arts. 

That  he  had  faults  must  be  admitted.  His  enemies  said  that 
he  had  an  inordinate  desire  for  public  office.  He  certainly  filled 
many,  and  a  desire  for  power  is  wrong  only  when  the  purposes 
are  wrong  for  which  it  is  coveted. 

If  he  had  so  chosen,  the  immense  powers  of  the  mind  which 
he  had  devoted  to  public  service  could  have  been  devoted 
successfully  to  accumulating  a  fortune.  He  had  great  executive 
capacity.  He  devoted  it  to  public  rather  than  to  private  ends. 
When  great  businessmen  of  today  prefer  to  be  remembered  by 
the  form  hi  which  they  leave  their  fortunes,  by  the  endowments 
or  funds  they  create,  Franklin  chose  that  succeeding  generations 
should  remember  not  the  endowments  of  his  fortune  but  the 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  67 

stamp  of  his  mind  and  character  that  he  should  leave  for  us, 
his  descendants,  the  memory  of  a  good  citizen. 


HENRY  VAN  DYKE 

[Henry  Van  Dyke  (1852 )  was  born  at  Germantown,  Pennsylvania. 

He  was  graduated  from  Princeton  and  later  studied  at  Berlin.  For  some 
years  he  was  pastor  of  the  Brick  Presbyterian  Church  in  New  York  City. 
In  1899  he  was  appointed  to  the  Murray  professorship  of  English  literature 
at  Princeton,  his  writings  both  in  prose  and  in  poetry  having  won  for  him 
acknowledged  literary  position.  In  1913  he  was  appointed  Minister  of  the 
United  States  to  the  Netherlands,  a  position  which  he  filled  with  great 
ability  until  his  resignation  in  1917.  The  portions  of  his  brochure,  The 
Americanism  of  Washington,  here  reprinted,  give  the  essential  points  of  the 
discussion.] 

What  shall  we  say,  then,  of  the  Americanism  of  Washington? 
It  was  denied,  during  his  lifetime  for  a  little  while,  by  those  who 
envied  his  greatness,  resented  his  leadership,  and  sought  to 
shake  him  from  his  lofty  place.  But  he  stood  serene  and  im- 
perturbable, while  that  denial,  like  many  another  blast  of  evil- 
scented  wind,  passed  into  nothingness,  even  before  the  dis- 
appearance of  the  party  strife  out  of  whose  fermentation  it  had 
arisen.  By  the  unanimous  judgment  of  his  countrymen  for  two 
generations  after  his  death  he  was  hailed  as  Pater  Patrice; 
and  the  age  which  conferred  that  title  was  too  ingenuous  to 
suppose  that  the  father  could  be  of  a  different  race  from  his 
own  offspring. 

But  the  modern  doubt  is  more  subtle,  more  curious,  more 
refined  in  its  methods.  It  does  not  spring,  as  the  old  denial  did, 
from  a  partisan  hatred,  which  would  seek  to  discredit  Wash- 
ington by  an  accusation  of  undue  partiality  for  England,  and 
thus  to  break  his  hold  upon  the  love  of  the  people.  It  arises, 
rather,  like  a  creeping  exhalation,  from  a  modern  theory  of 
what  true  Americanism  really  is:  a  theory  which  goes  back, 

JFrom  The  Americanism  of  Washington.  (Copyright,  1906,  Harper  Brothers.)  Re- 
printed by  permission. 


68  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

indeed,  for  its  inspiration  to  Dr.  Johnson's  somewhat  crudely 
expressed  opinion  that  "the  Americans  were  a  race  whom  no 
other  mortals  could  wish  to  resemble;"  but  which,  hi  its  later 
form,  takes  counsel  with  those  British  connoisseurs  who  demand 
of  their  typical  American  not  depravity  of  morals  but  depriva- 
tion of  manners,  not  vice  of  heart  but  vulgarity  of  speech,  not 
badness  but  bumptiousness,  and  at  least  enough  of  eccentricity 
to  make  him  amusing  to  cultivated  people.  I  find  that  not  a  few 
of  our  native  professors  and  critics  are  inclined  to  accept  some 
features  of  this  view,  perhaps  in  mere  reaction  from  the  unamus- 
ing  character  of  their  own  existence.  They  are  not  quite  ready 
to  subscribe  to  Mr.  Kipling's  statement  that  the  real  American 
is  "unkempt,  disreputable,  vast,"  but  they  are  willing  to  admit 
that  it  will  not  do  for  him  to  be  prudent,  orderly,  dignified.  He 
must  have  a  touch  of  picturesque  rudeness,  a  red  shirt  in  his 
mental  as  well  as  in  his  sartorial  outfit.  The  poetry  that  expresses 
him  must  recognize  no  metrical  rules.  The  art  that  depicts  him 
must  use  the  primitive  colors,  and  lay  them  on  thick.  I  remember 
reading  somewhere  that  Tennyson  had  an  idea  that  Longfellow, 
when  he  met  him,  would  put  his  feet  upon  the  table.  And  it  is 
precisely  because  Longfellow  kept  his  feet  in  their  proper  place, 
in  society  as  well  as  in  verse,  that  some  critics,  nowadays,  would 
have  us  believe  that  he  was  not  a  truly  American  poet. 

Traces  of  this  curious  theory  of  Americanism  in  its  applica- 
tion to  Washington  may  now  be  found  in  many  places.  You 
shall  hear  historians  describe  him  as  a  transplanted  English 
commoner,  a  second  edition  of  John  Hampden.  You  shall  read, 
in  a  famous  poem,  of  Lincoln  as 

"New  birth  of  our  new  soil,  the  first  American." 

That  Lincoln  was  one  of  the  greatest  Americans,  glorious  in 
the  largeness  of  his  heart,  the  vigor  of  his  manhood,  the  heroism 
of  his  soul,  none  can  doubt.  But  to  affirm  that  he  was  the  first 
American  is  to  disown  and  disinherit  Washington  and  Franklin 
and  Adams  and  Jefferson.  Lincoln  himself  would  have  been  the 
man  to  extinguish  such  an  impoverishing  claim  with  huge  and 
hearty  laughter.  He  knew  that  Grant  and  Sherman  and  Seward 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  69 

and  Farragut  and  the  men  who  stood  with  him  were  Americans, 
just  as  Washington  knew  that  the  Boston  maltster,  and  the 
Pennsylvania  printer,  and  the  Rhode  Island  anchor-smith,  and 
the  New  Jersey  preacher,  and  the  New  York  lawyer,  and  the 
men  who  stood  with  him  were  Americans. 

He  knew  it,  I  say:  and  by  what  divination?  By  a  test  more 
searching  than  any  mere  peculiarity  of  manners,  dress,  or  speech: 
by  a  touchstone  able  to  divide  the  gold  of  essential  character 
from  the  alloy  of  superficial  characteristics;  by  a  standard  which 
disregarded  alike  Franklin's  fur  cap  and  Putnam's  old  felt  hat, 
Morgan's  leather  leggings  and  Witherspoon's  black  silk  gown 
and  John  Adam's  lace  ruffles,  to  recognize  and  approve,  beneath 
these  various  garbs,  the  vital  sign  of  America  woven  into  the 
very  souls  of  the  men  who  belonged  to  her  by  a  spiritual  birth- 
right. 

For  what  is  true  Americanism,  and  where  does  it  reside? 
Not  on  the  tongue,  nor  in  the  clothes,  nor  among  the  transient 
social  forms,  refined  or  rude,  which  mottle  the  surface  of  human 
life.  The  log-cabin  has  no  monopoly  of  it,  nor  is  it  an  immovable 
fixture  of  the  stately  pillared  mansion.  Its  home  is  not  on  the 
frontier  nor  in  the  populous  city,  not  among  the  trees  of  the  wild 
forest  nor  the  cultured  groves  of  Academe.  Its  dwelling  is  in 
the  heart.  It  speaks  a  score  of  dialects  but  one  language,  follows 
a  hundred  paths  to  the  same  goal,  performs  a  thousand  kinds  of 
service  in  loyalty  to  the  same  ideal  which  is  its  life.  .  .  . 

To  believe  that  the  inalienable  rights  of  man  to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pur- 
suit of  happiness  are  given  by  God. 

To  believe  that  any  form  of  power  that  tramples  on  these  rights  is  unjust. 

To  believe  that  taxation  without  representation  is  tyranny,  that  govern- 
ment must  rest  upon  the  consent  of  the  governed,  and  that  the  people 
should  choose  their  own  rulers. 

To  believe  that  freedom  must  be  safeguarded  by  law  and  order,  and 
that  the  end  of  freedom  is  fair  play  for  all. 

To  believe  not  in  a  forced  equality  of  conditions  and  estates,  but  in  a 
true  equalization  of  burdens,  privileges,  and  opportunities. 

To  believe  that  the  selfish  interests  of  persons,  classes,  and  sections  must 
be  subordinated  to  the  welfare  of  the  commonwealth. 

To  believe  that  union  is  as  much  a  human  necessity  as  liberty  is  a  divine 
gift 


70  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

To  believe,  not  that  all  people  are  good,  but  that  the  way  to  make  them 
better  is  to  trust  the  whole  people. 

To  believe  that  a  free  state  should  offer  an  asylum  to  the  oppressed,  and 
an  example  of  virtue,  sobriety,  and  fair  dealing  to  all  nations. 

To  believe  that  for  the  existence  and  perpetuity  of  such  a  state  a  man 
should  be  willing  to  give  his  whole  service,  in  property,  in  labor,  and  in  life. 

That  is  Americanism;  an  ideal  embodying  itself  in  a  people; 
a  creed  heated  white  hot  in  the  furnace  of  conviction  and  ham- 
mered hi  to  shape  on  the  anvil  of  life;  a  vision  commanding  men 
to  follow  it  whithersoever  it  may  lead  them.  And  it  was  the 
subordination  of  the  personal  self  to  that  ideal,  that  creed,  that 
vision,  which  gave  eminence  and  glory  to  Washington  and  the 
men  who  stood  with  him.  .  .  . 

Washington,  no  doubt,  was  preeminent  among  his  contem- 
poraries in  natural  endowments.  Less  brilliant  in  his  mental 
gifts  than  some,  less  eloquent  and  accomplished  than  others,  he 
had  a  rare  balance  of  large  powers  which  justified  Lowell's 
phrase  of  "an  imperial  man."  His  athletic  vigor  and  skill,  his 
steadiness  of  nerve  restraining  an  intensity  of  passion,  his  un- 
daunted courage  which  refused  no  necessary  risks  and  his 
prudence  which  took  no  unnecessary  ones,  the  quiet  sureness 
with  which  he  grasped  large  ideas  and  the  pressing  energy  with 
which  he  executed  small  details,  the  breadth  of  his  intelligence, 
the  depth  of  his  convictions,  his  power  to  apply  great  thoughts 
and  principles  to  everyday  affairs,  and  his  singular  superiority 
to  current  prejudices  and  illusions, — these  were  gifts  in  combina- 
tion which  would  have  made  him  distinguished  in  any  company, 
in  any  age.  But  what  was  it  that  won  and  kept  a  free  field  for 
the  exercise  of  these  gifts?  What  was  it  that  secured  for  them  a 
long,  unbroken  opportunity  of  development  in  the  activities  of 
leadership,  until  they  reached  the  summit  of  their  perfection? 
It  was  a  moral  quality.  It  was  the  evident  magnanimity  of  the 
man  which  assured  the  people  that  he  was  no  self-seeker  who 
would  betray  then-  interests  for  his  own  glory  or  rob  them  for 
his  own  gain.  It  was  the  supreme  magnanimity  of  the  man, 
which  made  the  best  spirits  of  the  time  trust  him  implicitly,  hi 
war  and  peace,  as  one  who  would  never  forget  his  duty  or  his 
integrity  in  the  sense  of  his  own  greatness. 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  71 

From  the  first,  Washington  appears  not  as  a  man  aiming  at 
prominence  or  power,  but  rather  as  one  under  obligation  to  serve 
a  cause.  Necessity  was  laid  upon  him  and  he  met  it  willingly. 
After  his  marvelous  escape  from  death  in  his  first  campaign  for 
the  defence  of  the  Colonies,  the  Rev.  Samuel  Davies,  fourth 
president  of  Princeton  College,  spoke  of  him  in  a  sermon  as 
"that  heroic  youth,  Colonel  Washington,  whom  I  can  but  hope 
Providence  has  hitherto  preserved  in  so  signal  a  manner  for  some 
important  service  to  his  country."  It  was  a  prophetic  voice, 
and  Washington  was  not  disobedient  to  the  message.  Chosen 
to  command  the  Army  of  the  Revolution  in  1775,  he  confessed  to 
his  wife  his  deep  reluctance  to  surrender  the  joys  of  home, 
acknowledged  publicly  his  feeling  that  he  was  not  equal  to 
the  great  trust  committed  to  him,  and  then,  accepting  it  as 
thrown  upon  him  "by  a  kind  of  destiny,"  he  gave  himself  body 
and  soul  to  its  fulfilment,  refusing  all  pay  beyond  the  mere  dis- 
charge of  his  expenses,  of  which  he  kept  a  strict  account,  and 
asking  no  other  reward  than  the  success  of  the  cause  which  he 
served.  .  .  . 

There  are  a  hundred  other  points  in  Washington's  career  in 
which  the  same  supremacy  of  character,  magnanimity  focused 
on  service  to  an  ideal,  is  revealed  in  conduct.  I  see  it  in  [the  wis- 
dom with  which  he,  a  son  of  the  South,  chose  most  of  his  generals 
from  the  North,  that  he  might  secure  immediate  efficiency 
and  unity  in  the  army.  I  see  it  in  the  generosity  with  which 
he  praised  the  achievements  of  his  associates,  disregarding 
jealous  rivalries,  and  ever  willing  to  share  the  credit  of  victory 
as  he  was  to  bear  the  burden  of  defeat.  I  see  it  in  the  patience 
with  which  he  suffered  his  fame  to  be  imperiled  for  the  moment 
by  reverses  and  retreats,  if  only  he  might  the  more  surely 
guard  the  frail  hope  of  ultimate  victory  for  his  country.  I  see 
it  in  the  quiet  dignity  with  which  he  faced  the  Conway  Cabal, 
not  anxious  to  defend  his  own  reputation  and  secure  his  own 
power,  but  nobly  resolute  to  save  the  army  from  being  crippled 
and  the  cause  of  liberty  from  being  wrecked.  I  see  it  in  the 
splendid  self-forgetf ulness  which  cleansed  his  mind  of  all  temp- 
tation to  take  personal  revenge  upon  those  who  had  sought 


72  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

to  injure  him  in  that  base  intrigue.  I  read  it  in  his  letter  of 
consolation  and  encouragement  to  the  wretched  Gates  after 
the  defeat  at  Camden.  I  hear  the  prolonged  reechoing  music  of 
it  in  his  letter  to  General  Knox  in  1798,  in  regard  to  military 
appointments,  declaring  his  wish  to  "avoid  feuds  with  those  who 
are  embarked  in  the  same  general  enterprise  with  myself." 

Listen  to  the  same  spirit  as  it  speaks  in  his  circular  address 
to  the  governors  of  the  different  states,  urging  them  to  "forget 
their  local  prejudices  and  policies;  to  make  those  mutual  con- 
cessions which  are  requisite  to  the  general  prosperity,  and  in 
some  instances  to  sacrifice  their  individual  advantages  to  the 
interest  of  the  community."  Watch  how  it  guides  him  unerringly 
through  the  critical  period  of  American  history  which  lies  be- 
tween the  success  of  the  Revolution  and  the  establishment  of 
the  nation,  enabling  him  to  avoid  the  pitfalls  of  sectional  and 
partisan  strife,  and  to  use  his  great  influence  with  the  people  in 
leading  them  out  of  the  confusion  of  a  weak  Confederacy  into 
the  strength  of  an  indissoluble  Union  of  sovereign  states.  See 
how  he  once  more  sets  aside  his  personal  preferences  for  a  quiet 
country  life,  and  risks  his  already  secure  popularity,  together 
with  his  reputation  for  consistency,  by  obeying  the  voice  which 
calls  him  to  be  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency.  See  how  he 
chooses  for  the  cabinet  and  for  the  Supreme  Court,  not  an 
exclusive  group  of  personal  friends,  but  men  who  can  be  trusted 
to  serve  the  great  cause  of  Union  with  fidelity  and  power — 
Jefferson,  Randolph,  Hamilton,  Knox,  John  Jay,  Wilson,  Gush- 
ing, Rutledge.  See  how  patiently  and  indomitably  he  gives 
himself  to  the  toil  of  office,  deriving  from  his  exalted  station  no 
gain  "beyond  the  lustre  which  may  be  reflected  from  its  con- 
nection with  a  power  of  promoting  human  felicity."  See  how  he 
retires,  at  last,  to  the  longed-for  joys  of  private  life,  confessing 
that  his  career  has  not  been  without  errors  of  judgment,  be- 
seeching the  Almighty  that  they  may  bring  no  harm  to  his 
country,  and  asking  no  other  reward  for  his  labors  than  to  par- 
take, "in  the  midst  of  my  fellow-citizens,  the  benign  influence  of 
good  laws  under  a  free  government,  the  ever  favorite  object  of 
my  heart." 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  73 

Oh,  sweet  and  stately  words,  revealing  through  their  calm 
reserve,  the  inmost  secret  of  a  life  that  did  not  flare  with  tran- 
sient enthusiasm  but  glowed  with  unquenchable  devotion  to  a 
cause!  "The  ever  favorite  object  of  my  heart" — how  quietly, 
how  simply  he  discloses  the  source  and  origin  of  a  sublime  con- 
secration, a  lifelong  heroism.  Thus  speaks  the  victor  looking 
back  upon  the  long  battle.  But  if  you  would  know  the  depth 
and  the  intensity  of  the  divine  fire  that  burned  within  his  breast 
you  must  go  back  to  the  dark  and  icy  days  of  Valley  Forge,  and 
hear  him  cry  hi  passion  unrestrained:  "If  I  know  my  own  mind, 
I  could  offer  myself  a  living  sacrifice  to  the  butchering  enemy, 
provided  that  would  contribute  to  the  people's  ease.  I  would 
be  a  living  offering  to  the  savage  fury  and  die  by  inches  to  save 
the  people." 

The  ever  favorite  object  of  my  heart!  It  is  the  capacity  to  find 
such  an  object  in  the  success  of  the  people's  cause,  to  follow  it 
unselfishly,  to  serve  it  loyally,  that  distinguishes  the  men  who 
stood  with  Washington  and  who  deserve  to  share  his  fame. 
I  read  the  annals  of  the  Revolution,  and  I  find  everywhere  this 
secret  and  searching  test  dividing  the  strong  from  the  weak, 
the  noble  from  the  base,  the  heirs  of  glory  from  the  captives 
of  oblivion  and  the  inheritors  of  shame.  It  was  the  unwillingness 
to  sink  and  forget  self  in  the  service  of  something  greater  that 
made  the  failures  and  wrecks  of  those  tempestuous  times, 
through  which  the  single-hearted  and  the  devoted  pressed  on  to 
victory  and  honor.  ... 

Is  not  this,  after  all,  the  root  of  the  whole  matter?  Is  not  this 
the  thing  that  is  vitally  and  essentially  true  of  all  those  great 
men,  clustering  about  Washington,  whose  fame  we  honor  and 
revere  with  his?  They  all  left  the  community,  the  commonwealth, 
the  race,  in  debt  to  them.  This  was  their  purpose  and  the  ever 
favorite  object  of  their  hearts.  They  were  deliberate  and  joyful 
creditors.  Renouncing  the  maxim  of  worldly  wisdom  which  bids 
men  "get  all  you  can  and  keep  all  you  get,"  they  resolved  rather 
to  give  all  they  had  to  advance  the  common  cause,  to  use  every 
benefit  conferred  upon  them  in  the  service  of  the  general  wel- 
fare, to  bestow  upon  the  world  more  than  they  received  from  it, 


74  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

and  to  leave  a  fair  and  unblotted  account  of  business  done  with 
life  which  should  show  a  clear  balance  in  their  favor. 


LINCOLN  AS  AN  AMERICAN1 
HERBERT  CROLY 

[Herbert  Croly  (1869 )  was  born  in  New  York  City.  After  attend- 
ing the  College  of  the  City  of  New  York  and  Harvard  University,  he  has 
devoted  himself  to  literary  work.  He  has  held  editorial  positions  on  several 
magazines  and  is  the  author  of  several  books.  The  selection  here  given  is 
from  his  The  Promise  of  American  Life  and  is  an  attempt  to  show  Lincoln  as 
an  example  of  the  land  of  human  excellence  that  is  possible  under  a  democ- 
racy like  that  of  the  United  States.] 

Lincoln's  services  to  his  country  have  been  rewarded  with 
such  abundant  appreciation  that  it  may  seem  superfluous  to 
insist  upon  them  once  again;  but  I  believe  that  from  the  point 
of  view  of  this  book  an  even  higher  value  may  be  placed,  if  not 
upon  his  patriotic  service,  at  least  upon  his  personal  worth. 
The  Union  might  well  have  been  saved  and  slavery  extinguished 
without  his  assistance;  but  the  life  of  no  other  American  has 
revealed  with  anything  like  the  same  completeness  the  peculiar 
moral  promise  of  genuine  democracy.  He  shows  us  by  the  full 
but  unconscious  integrity  of  his  example  the  kind  of  human 
excellence  which  a  political  and  social  democracy  may  and  should 
fashion;  and  its  most  grateful  and  hopeful  aspect  is,  not  merely 
that  there  is  something  partially  American  about  the  manner 
of  his  excellence,  but  that  it  can  be  fairly  compared  with  the 
classic  types  of  consummate  personal  distinction. 

To  all  appearance  nobody  could  have  been  more  than  Abraham 
Lincoln  a  man  of  his  own  time  and  place.  Until  1858  his  outer 
life  ran  much  in  the  same  groove  as  that  of  hundreds  of  other 
western  politicians  and  lawyers.  Beginning  as  a  poor  and 
ignorant  boy,  even  less  provided  with  props  and  stepping-stones 
than  were  his  associates,  he  had  worked  his  way  to  a  position 
of  ordinary  professional  and  political  distinction.  He  was  not, 

iFrom  The  Promise  of  American  Life.  (Copyright,  1909,  The  Macmillan  Company.) 
Reprinted  by  permission. 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  75 

like  Douglas,  a  brilliant  success.  He  was  not,  like  Grant,  an 
apparently  hopeless  failure.  He  had  achieved  as  much  and  as 
little  as  hundreds  of  others  had  achieved.  He  was  respected 
by  his  neighbors  as  an  honest  man  and  as  a  competent  lawyer. 
They  credited  him  with  ability,  but  not  to  any  extraordinary 
extent.  No  one  would  have  pointed  him  out  as  a  remarkable 
and  distinguished  man.  He  had  shown  himself  to  be  desirous 
of  recognition  and  influence;  but  ambition  had  not  been  the 
compelling  motive  in  his  life.  In  most  respects  his  ideas,  in- 
terests, and  standards  were  precisely  the  same  as  those  of  his 
associates.  He  accepted  with  them  the  fabric  of  traditional 
American  political  thought  and  the  ordinary  standards  of  con- 
temporary political  morality.  He  had  none  of  the  moral  strenu- 
ousness  of  the  reformer,  none  of  the  exclusiveness  of  a  man 
whose  purposes  and  ideas  were  consciously  perched  higher  than 
those  of  his  neighbors.  Probably  the  majority  of  his  more 
successful  associates  classed  him  as  a  good  and  able  man  who 
was  somewhat  lacking  in  ambition  and  had  too  much  of  a  dis- 
position to  loaf.  He  was  most  at  home,  not  in  his  own  house, 
but  in  the  corner  grocery  store,  where  he  could  sit  with  his  feet 
on  the  stove  swapping  stories  with  his  friends;  and  if  an  English 
traveler  of  1850  had  happened  in  on  the  group,  he  would  most 
assuredly  have  discovered  another  instance  of  the  distressing 
vulgarity  to  which  the  absence  of  an  hereditary  aristocracy  and 
an  established  church  condemned  the  American  democracy. 
Thus  no  man  could  apparently  have  been  more  the  average 
product  of  his  day  and  generation.  Nevertheless,  at  bottom, 
Abraham  Lincoln  differed  as  essentially  from  the  ordinary 
western  American  of  the  middle  period  as  St.  Francis  af  Assisi 
differed  from  the  ordinary  Benedictine  monk  of  the  thirteenth 
century. 

The  average  western  American  of  Lincoln's  generation  was 
fundamentally  a  man  who  subordinated  his  intelligence  to  cer- 
tain dominant  practical  interests  and  purposes.  He  was  far 
from  being  a  stupid  or  slow-witted  man.  On  the  contrary, 
his  wits  had  been  sharpened  by  the  traffic  of  American  politics 
and  business,  and  his  mind  was  shrewd,  flexible,  and  alert. 


76  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

But  he  was  wholly  incapable  either  of  disinterested  or  of  con- 
centrated intellectual  exertion.  His  energies  were  bent  in  the 
conquest  of  certain  stubborn  external  forces,  and  he  used  his 
intelligence  almost  exclusively  to  this  end.  The  struggles,  the 
hardships,  and  the  necessary  self-denial  of  pioneer  life  con- 
stituted an  admirable  training  of  the  will.  It  developed  a  body 
of  men  with  great  resolution  of  purpose  and  with  great  ingenuity 
and  fertility  in  adapting  their  insufficient  means  to  the  realiza- 
tion of  their  important  business  affairs.  But  their  almost 
exclusive  preoccupation  with  practical  tasks  and  their  failure 
to  grant  then*  intelligence  any  room  for  independent  exercise 
bent  them  into  exceedingly  warped  and  one-sided  human  beings. 
Lincoln,  on  the  contrary,  much  as  he  was  a  man  of  his  own 
time  and  people,  was  precisely  an  example  of  high  and  disin- 
terested intellectual  culture.  During  all  the  formative  years  in 
which  his  life  did  not  superficially  differ  from  that  of  his  asso- 
ciates, he  was  in  point  of  fact  using  every  chance  which  the 
material  of  western  life  afforded  to  discipline  and  inform  his 
mind.  These  materials  were  not  very  abundant;  and  in  the  use 
which  he  proceeded  to  make  of  them  Lincoln  had  no  assistance, 
either  from  a  sound  tradition  or  from  a  better  educated  master. 
On  the  contrary,  as  the  history  of  the  times  shows,  there  was 
every  temptation  for  a  man  with  a  strong  intellectual  bent  to 
be  betrayed  into  mere  extravagance  and  aberration.  But  with 
the  sound  instinct  of  a  well-balanced  intelligence  Lincoln  seized 
upon  the  three  available  books,  the  earnest  study  of  which 
might  best  help  to  develop  harmoniously  a  strong  and  many- 
sided  intelligence.  He  seized,  that  is,  upon  the  Bible,  Shaks- 
pere,  and  Euclid.  To  his  contemporaries  the  Bible  was  for  the 
most  part  a  fountain  of  fanatic  revivalism,  and  Shakspere,  if 
anything,  a  name  of  quotations.  But  in  the  case  of  Lincoln, 
Shakspere  and  the  Bible  served,  not  merely  to  awaken  his 
taste  and  fashion  his  style,  but  also  to  liberate  his  literary  and 
moral  imagination.  At  the  same  time  he  was  training  his  powers 
of  thought  by  an  assiduous  study  of  algebra  and  geometry.  The 
absorbing  hours  he  spent  over  his  Euclid  were  apparently  of 
no  use  to  him  in  his  profession;  but  Lincoln  was  in  his  way  an 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  77 

intellectual  gymnast  and  enjoyed  the  exertion  for  its  own  sake. 
Such  a  use  of  his  leisure  must  have  seemed  a  sheer  waste  of  time 
to  his  more  practical  friends,  and  they  might  well  have  accounted 
for  his  comparative  lack  of  success  by  his  indulgence  hi  such 
secret  and  useless  pastimes.  Neither  would  this  criticism  have 
been  beside  the  mark,  for  if  Lincoln's  great  energy  and  powers 
of  work  had  been  devoted  exclusively  to  practical  ends,  he  might 
well  have  become  in  the  early  days  a  more  prominent  lawyer 
and  politician  than  he  actually  was.  But  he  preferred  the  satis- 
faction of  his  own  intellectual  and  social  instincts,  and  so  quali- 
fied himself  for  achievements  beyond  the  power  of  a  Douglas. 
In  addition,  however,  to  these  private  gymnastics  Lincoln 
shared  with  his  neighbors  a  public  and  popular  source  of  intel- 
lectual and  human  insight.  The  western  pioneers,  for  all  their 
exclusive  devotion  to  practical  purposes,  wasted  a  good  deal  of 
time  on  apparently  useless  social  intercourse.  In  the  middle 
western  towns  of  that  day  there  was,  as  we  have  seen,  an  ex- 
traordinary amount  of  good-fellowship,  which  was  quite  the  most 
wholesome  and  humanizing  thing  which  entered  into  the  lives 
of  these  hard-working  and  hard-featured  men.  The  whole  male 
countryside  was  in  its  way  a  club;  and  when  the  presence  of 
women  did  not  make  them  awkward  and  sentimental,  the  men 
let  themselves  loose  in  an  amount  of  rough  pleasantry  and  free 
conversation  which  added  the  one  genial  and  liberating  touch  to 
their  lives.  This  club  life  of  his  own  people  Lincoln  enjoyed 
and  shared  much  more  than  did  his  average  neighbor.  He 
passed  the  greater  part  of  what  he  would  have  called  his  leisure 
time  in  swapping  stories  with  his  friends,  in  which  the  genial 
and  humorous  side  of  western  life  was  embodied.  Doubtless 
his  domestic  unhappiness  had  much  to  do  with  his  vagrancy;  but 
his  native  instinct  for  the  wholesome  and  illuminating  aspect  of 
the  life  around  him  brought  him  more  frequently  than  any  other 
cause  to  the  club  of  loafers  in  the  general  store.  And  whatever 
the  promiscuous  conversation  and  the  racy  yarns  meant  to  his 
associates,  they  meant  vastly  more  to  Lincoln.  His  hours  of 
social  vagrancy  really  completed  the  process  of  his  intellectual 
training.  It  relieved  his  culture  from  the  taint  of  bookishness. 


78  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

It  gave  substance  to  his  humor.  It  humanized  his  wisdom  and 
enabled  him  to  express  it  in  a  familiar  and  dramatic  form.  It 
placed  at  his  disposal,  that  is,  the  great  classic  vehicle  of  popular 
expression,  which  is  the  parable  and  the  spoken  word. 

Of  course,  it  was  just  because  he  shared  so  completely  the 
amusements  and  the  occupations  of  his  neighbors  that  his  pri- 
vate personal  culture  had  no  embarrassing  effects.  Neither  he 
nor  his  neighbors  were  in  the  least  aware  that  he  had  been 
placed  thereby  hi  a  different  intellectual  class.  No  doubt  the 
loneliness  and  sadness  of  his  personal  life  may  be  partly  ex- 
plained by  a  dumb  sense  of  difference  from  his  fellows;  and  no 
doubt  this  very  loneliness  and  sadness  intensified  the  mental 
preoccupation  which  was  both  the  sign  and  the  result  of  his 
personal  culture.  But  his  unconsciousness  of  his  own  distinction, 
as  well  as  his  regular  participation  in  political  and  professional 
practice,  kept  his  will  as  firm  and  vigorous  as  if  he  were  really 
no  more  than  a  man  of  action.  His  natural  steadiness  of  purpose 
had  been  toughened  in  the  beginning  by  the  hardships  and 
struggles  which  he  shared  with  his  neighbors;  and  his  self-im- 
posed intellectual  discipline  in  no  way  impaired  the  stability  of 
his  character,  because  his  personal  culture  never  alienated  him 
from  his  neighbors  and  threw  him  into  a  consciously  critical 
frame  of  mind.  The  time  which  he  spent  in  intellectual  diver- 
sion may  have  diminished  to  some  extent  his  practical  efficiency 
previous  to  the  gathering  crisis.  It  certainly  made  him  less 
inclined  to  the  aggressive  self-assertion  which  a  successful 
political  career  demanded.  But  when  the  crisis  came,  when  the 
minds  of  northern  patriots  were  stirred  by  the  ugly  alternative 
offered  to  them  by  the  South,  and  when  Lincoln  was  by  the 
course  of  events  restored  to  active  participation  in  politics,  he 
soon  showed  that  he  had  reached  the  highest  of  all  objects  of 
personal  culture.  While  still  remaining  one  of  a  body  of  men 
who,  all  unconsciously,  impoverished  their  minds  in  order  to 
increase  the  momentum  of  their  practical  energy,  he  none  the 
less  achieved  for  himself  a  mutually  helpful  relation  between  a 
firm  will  and  a  luminous  intelligence. .  The  training  of  his  mind, 
the  awakening  of  his  imagination,  the  formation  of  his  taste  and 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  79 

style,  the  humorous  dramatizing  of  his  experience — all  this  dis- 
cipline had  failed  to  pervert  his  character,  narrow  his  sympa- 
thies, or  undermine  his  purposes.  His  intelligence  served  to 
enlighten  his  will,  and  his  will  to  establish  the  mature  decisions 
of  his  intelligence.  Late  in  life  the  two  faculties  became  in  their 
exercise  almost  indistinguishable.  His  judgments,  in  so  far  as 
they  were  decisive,  were  charged  with  momentum,  and  his 
actions  were  instinct  with  sympathy  and  understanding. 

Just  because  his  actions  were  instinct  with  sympathy  and 
understanding,  Lincoln  was  certainly  the  most  humane  states- 
man who  ever  guided  a  nation  through  a  great  crisis.  He  always 
regarded  other  men  and  acted  toward  them,  not  merely  as  the 
embodiment  of  an  erroneous  or  harmful  idea,  but  as  human 
beings,  capable  of  better  things;  and  consequently  all  of  his 
thoughts  and  actions  looked  in  the  direction  of  a  higher  level 
of  human  association.  It  is  this  characteristic  which  makes 
him  a  better  and,  be  it  hoped,  a  more  prophetic  democrat  than 
any  other  national  American  leader.  His  peculiar  distinction 
does  not  consist  in  the  fact  that  he  was  a  "man  of  the  people" 
who  passed  from  the  condition  of  splitting  rails  to  the  condition 
of  being  President.  No  doubt  he  was  in  this  respect  as  good  a 
democrat  as  you  please,  and  no  doubt  it  was  desirable  that  he 
should  be  this  kind  of  a  democrat.  But  many  other  Americans 
could  be  named  who  were  also  men  of  the  people,  and  who 
passed  from  the  most  insignificant  to  the  most  honored  positions 
in  American  life.  Lincoln's  peculiar  and  permanent  distinction 
as  a  democrat  will  depend  rather  upon  the  fact  that  his  thoughts 
and  his  actions  looked  toward  the  realization  of  the  highest 
and  most  edifying  democratic  ideal.  Whatever  his  theories 
were,  he  showed  by  his  general  outlook  and  behavior  that  de- 
mocracy meant  to  him  more  than  anything  else  the  spirit  and 
principle  of  brotherhood.  He  was  the  foremost  to  deny  liberty 
to  the  South,  and  he  had  his  sensible  doubts  about  the  equality 
between  the  negro  and  the  white  man;  but  he  actually  treated 
everybody — the  southern  rebel,  the  negro  slave,  the  northern 
deserter,  the  personal  enemy — in  a  just  and  kindly  spirit. 
Neither  was  this  kindliness  merely  an  instance  of  ordinary 


8o  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

American  amiability  and  good  nature.  It  was  the  result,  not 
of  superficial  feeling  which  could  be  easily  ruffled,  but  of  his 
personal,  moral,  and  intellectual  discipline.  He  had  made  for 
himself  a  second  nature,  compact  of  insight  and  loving-kindness. 
It  must  be  remembered,  also,  that  this  higher  humanity 
resided  in  a  man  who  was  the  human  instrument  partly  re- 
sponsible for  an  awful  amount  of  slaughter  and  human  anguish. 
He  was  not  only  the  commander-in-chief  of  a  great  army  which 
fought  a  long  and  bloody  war,  but  he  was  the  statesman  who 
had  insisted  that,  if  necessary,  the  war  should  be  fought.  His 
mental  attitude  was  dictated  by  a  mixture  of  practical  common 
sense  with  genuine  human  insight,  and  it  is  just  this  mixture 
which  makes  him  so  rare  a  man  and,  be  it  hoped,  so  prophetic 
a  democrat.  He  could  at  one  and  the  same  moment  order  his 
countrymen  to  be  killed  for  seeking  to  destroy  the  American 
nation  and  forgive  them  for  their  error.  His  kindliness  and  his 
brotherly  feeling  did  not  lead  him,  after  the  manner  of  Jefferson, 
to  shirk  the  necessity  and  duty  of  national  defence.  Neither 
did  it  lead  him,  after  the  manner  of  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  to 
advocate  non-resistance,  while  at  the  same  tune  arousing  in  his 
fellow-countrymen  a  spirit  of  fratricidal  warfare.  In  the  midst 
of  that  hideous  civil  contest  which  was  provoked,  perhaps  un- 
necessarily, by  hatred,  irresponsibility,  passion,  and  disloyalty, 
and  which  has  been  the  fruitful  cause  of  national  disloyalty  down 
to  the  present  day,  Lincoln  did  not  for  a  moment  cherish  a 
bitter  or  unjust  feeling  against  the  national  enemies.  The 
southerners,  filled  as  they  were  with  a  passionate  democratic 
devotion  to  their  own  interests  and  liberties,  abused  Lincoln 
until  they  really  came  to  believe  that  he  was  a  military  tyrant, 
yet  he  never  failed  to  treat  them  in  a  fair  and  forgiving  spirit. 
When  he  was  assassinated,  it  was  the  South,  as  well  as  the 
American  nation,  which  had  lost  its  best  friend,  because  he 
alone  among  the  Republican  leaders  had  the  wisdom  to  see  that 
the  divided  House  could  only  be  restored  by  justice  and  kind- 
ness; and  if  there  are  any  defects  in  its  restoration  today,  they 
are  chiefly  due  to  the  baleful  spirit  of  injustice  and  hatred  which 
the  Republicans  took  over  from  the  Abolitionists. 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  81 

His  superiority  to  his  political  associates  in  constructive  states- 
manship is  measured  by  his  superiority  in  personal  character. 
There  are  many  men  who  are  able  to  forgive  the  enemies  of  their 
country,  but  there  are  few  who  can  forgive  their  personal  ene- 
mies. I  need  not  rehearse  the  well-known  instances  of  Lincoln's 
magnanimity.  He  not  only  cherished  no  resentment  against 
men  who  had  intentionally  and  even  maliciously  injured  him, 
but  he  seems  at  times  to  have  gone  out  of  his  way  to  do  them  a 
service.  This  is,  perhaps,  his  greatest  distinction.  Lincoln's 
magnanimity  is  the  final  proof  of  the  completeness  of  his  self- 
discipline.  The  quality  of  being  magnanimous  is  both  the  con- 
summate virtue  and  the  one  which  is  least  natural.  It  was  cer- 
tainly far  from  being  natural  among  Lincoln's  own  people. 
Americans  of  his  time  were  generally  of  the  opinion  that  it  was 
dishonorable  to  overlook  a  personal  injury.  They  considered  it 
weak  and  unmanly  not  to  quarrel  with  another  man  a  little 
harder  than  he  quarreled  with  you.  The  pioneer  was  good- 
natured  and  kindly;  but  he  was  aggressive,  quick-tempered,  un- 
reasonable, and  utterly  devoid  of  personal  discipline.  A  slight 
or  an  insult  to  his  personality  became  in  his  eyes  a  moral  wrong 
which  must  be  cherished  and  avenged,  and  which  relieved  him 
of  any  obligation  to  be  just  or  kind  to  his  enemy.  Many  con- 
spicuous illustrations  of  this  quarrelsome  spirit  are  to  be  found 
in  the  political  life  of  the  middle  period,  which,  indeed,  cannot 
be  understood  without  constantly  falling  back  upon  the  influ- 
ence of  lively  personal  resentments.  Every  prominent  politician 
cordially  disliked  or  hated  a  certain  number  of  his  political  ad- 
versaries and  associates;  and  his  public  actions  were  often  dic- 
tated by  a  purpose  either  to  injure  these  men  or  to  get  ahead  of 
them.  After  the  retirement  of  Jackson  these  enmities  and  resent- 
ments came  to  have  a  smaller  influence;  but  a  man's  right  and 
duty  to  quarrel  with  anybody  who,  in  his  opinion,  had  done  him 
an  injury  was  unchallenged,  and  was  generally  considered  to  be 
the  necessary  accompaniment  of  American  democratic  virility. 

As  I  have  intimated  above,  Andrew  Jackson  was  the  most 
conspicuous  example  of  this  quarrelsome  spirit,  and  for  this 
reason  he  is  wholly  inferior  to  Lincoln  as  a  type  of  democratic 


82  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

manhood.  Jackson  had  many  admirable  qualities  and  on  the 
whole  he  served  his  country  well.  He  also  was  a  "man  of  the 
people"  who  understood  and  represented  the  mass  of  his  fellow- 
countrymen,  and  who  played  the  part,  according  to  his  lights, 
of  a  courageous  and  independent  political  leader.  He  also 
loved  and  defended  the  Union.  But  with  all  his  excellence  he 
should  never  be  held  up  as  a  model  to  American  youth.  The 
world  was  divided  into  his  personal  friends  and  followers  and 
his  personal  enemies,  and  he  was  as  eager  to  do  the  latter  an 
injury  as  he  was  to  do  the  former  a  service.  His  quarrels  were 
not  petty,  because  Jackson  was,  on  the  whole,  a  big  rather 
than  a  little  man,  but  they  were  fierce  and  they  were  for  the  most 
part  irreconcilable.  They  bulk  so  large  hi  his  life  that  they  can- 
not be  overlooked.  They  stamp  him  a  type  of  the  vindictive 
man  without  personal  discipline,  just  as  Lincoln's  behavior 
towards  Stanton,  Chase,  and  others  stamps  him  a  type  of 
the  man  who  has  achieved  magnanimity.  He  is  the  kind  of 
national  hero  the  admiring  imitation  of  whom  can  do  nothing 
but  good. 

Lincoln  had  abandoned  the  illusion  of  his  own  peculiar  per- 
sonal importance.  He  had  become  profoundly  and  sincerely 
humble,  and  his  humility  was  as  far  as  possible  from  being 
either  a  conventional  pose  or  a  matter  of  nervous  self-distrust. 
It  did  not  impair  the  firmness  of  his  will.  It  did  not  betray 
him  into  shirking  responsibilities.  Although  only  a  country 
lawyer  without  executive  experience,  he  did  not  flinch  from 
assuming  the  leadership  of  a  great  nation  in  one  of  the  gravest 
crises  of  its  national  history,  from  becoming  commander-in-chief 
of  an  army  of  a  million  men,  and  from  spending  $3,000,000,000 
in  the  prosecution  of  a  war.  His  humility,  that  is,  was  precisely 
an  example  of  moral  vitality  and  insight  rather  than  of  moral 
awkwardness  and  enfeeblement.  It  was  the  fruit  of  reflection 
on  his  own  personal  experience — the  supreme  instance  of  his 
ability  to  attain  moral  truth  both  in  discipline  and  in  idea;  and 
in  its  aspect  of  a  moral  truth  it  obtained  a  more  explicit  expres- 
sion than  did  some  other  of  his  finer  personal  attributes.  His 
practice  of  cherishing  and  repeating  the  plaintive  little  verses 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  83 

which  inquire  monotonously  whether  the  spirit  of  mortal  has 
any  right  to  be  proud  indicates  the  depth  and  the  highly  con- 
scious character  of  this  fundamental  moral  conviction.  He  is 
not  only  humble  himself,  but  he  feels  and  declares  that  men  have 
no  right  to  be  anything  but  humble;  and  he  thereby  enters  into 
possession  of  the  most  fruitful  and  the  most  universal  of  all 
religious  ideas. 

Lincoln's  humility,  no  less  than  his  liberal  intelligence  and 
his  magnanimous  disposition,  is  more  democratic  than  it  is 
American;  but  in  this,  as  in  so  many  other  cases,  his  personal 
moral  dignity  and  his  peculiar  moral  insight  did  not  separate 
him  from  his  associates.  Like  them,  he  wanted  professional 
success,  public  office,  and  the  ordinary  rewards  of  American 
life;  and  like  them,  he  bears  no  trace  of  political  or  moral 
purism.  But  unlike  them,  he  was  not  the  intellectual  and  moral 
victim  of  his  own  purposes  and  ambitions;  and  unlike  them,  his 
life  is  a  tribute  to  the  sincerity  and  depth  of  his  moral  insight. 
He  could  never  have  become  a  national  leader  by  the  ordinary 
road  of  insistent  and  clamorous  self-assertion.  Had  he  not  been 
restored  to  public  life  by  the  crisis,  he  would  have  remained  in 
all  probability  a  comparatively  obscure  and  a  wholly  under- 
valued man.  But  the  political  ferment  of  1856  and  the  threat 
of  ruin  overhanging  the  American  Union  pushed  him  again  on 
to  the  political  highway;  and  once  there,  his  years  of  intellectual 
discipline  enabled  him  to  play  a  leading  and  a  decisive  part. 
His  personality  obtained  momentum,  direction,  and  increasing 
dignity  from  its  identification  with  great  issues  and  events.  He 
became  the  individual  instrument  whereby  an  essential  and 
salutary  national  purpose  was  fulfilled;  and  the  instrument  was 
admirably  effective,  precisely  because  it  had  been  silently  and 
unconsciously  tempered  and  formed  for  high  achievement. 
Issue  as  he  was  of  a  society  in  which  the  cheap  tool,  whether 
mechanical  or  personal,  was  the  immediately  successful  tool, 
he  had  none  the  less  labored  long  in  the  making  of  a  consum- 
mate individual  instrument. 

Some  of  my  readers  may  protest  that  I  have  over-emphasized 
the  difference  between  Lincoln  and  his  contemporary  fellow- 


84  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

countrymen.  In  order  to  exalt  the  leader  have  I  not  too  much 
disparaged  the  followers?  Well,  a  comparison  of  this  kind 
always  involves  the  risk  of  unfairness;  but  if  there  is  much  truth 
in  the  foregoing  estimate  of  Lincoln,  the  lessons  of  the  com- 
parison are  worth  its  inevitable  risks.  The  ordinary  interpre- 
tation of  Lincoln  as  a  consummate  democrat  and  a  "man  of 
the  people"  has  implied  that  he  was,  like  Jackson,  simply  a 
bigger  and  a  better  version  of  the  plain  American  citizen;  and 
it  is  just  this  interpretation  which  I  have  sought  to  deny  and 
to  expose.  In  many  respects  he  was,  of  course,  very  much  like 
his  neighbors  and  associates.  He  accepted  everything  whole- 
some and  useful  in  their  life  and  behavior.  He  shared  their 
good-fellowship,  their  strength  of  will,  their  excellent  faith,  and 
above  all  their  innocence;  and  he  could  never  have  served  his 
country  so  well,  or  reached  as  high  a  level  of  personal  dignity, 
in  case  he  had  not  been  good-natured  and  strong  and  innocent. 
But,  as  all  commentators  have  noted,  he  was  not  only  good- 
natured,  strong,  and  innocent;  he  had  made  himself  intellectually 
candid,  concentrated,  and  disinterested,  and  morally  humane, 
magnanimous,  and  humble.  All  these  qualities,  which  were  the 
very  flower  of  his  personal  life,  were  not  possessed  either  by 
the  average  or  the  exceptional  American  of  his  day;  and  not  only 
were  they  not  possessed,  but  they  were  either  wholly  ignored 
or  consciously  undervalued.  Yet  these  very  qualities  of  high 
intelligence,  humanity,  magnanimity,  and  humility  are  pre- 
cisely the  qualities  which  Americans,  in  order  to  become  better 
democrats,  should  add  to  their  strength,  their  homogeneity,  and 
their  innocence;  while  at  the  same  time  they  are  just  the  qualities 
which  Americans  are  prevented  by  their  individualistic  practice 
and  tradition  from  attaining  or  properly  valuing.  Their  deepest 
convictions  make  the  average  unintelligent  man  the  repre- 
sentative democrat,  and  the  aggressive  successful  individual  the 
admirable  national  type;  and  in  conformity  with  these  convic- 
tions their  uppermost  ideas  in  respect  to  Lincoln  are  that  he 
was  a  "man  of  the  people"  and  an  example  of  strong  will. 
He  was  both  of  these  things,  but  his  great  distinction  is  that  he 
was  also  something  vastly  more  and  better.  He  cannot  be 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  85 

fully  understood  and  properly  valued  as  a  national  hero  with- 
out an  implicit  criticism  of  these  traditional  convictions.  Such 
a  criticism  he  himself  did  not  and  could  not  make.  In  case  he 
had  made  it,  he  could  never  have  achieved  his  great  political 
task  and  his  great  personal  triumph.  But  other  times  bring  other 
needs.  It  is  as  desirable  today  that  the  criticism  should  be  made 
explicit  as  it  was  that  Lincoln  himself  in  his  day  should  preserve 
the  innocence  and  integrity  of  a  unique  unconscious  example. 


EMERSON1 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

[Matthew  Arnold  (1822-1888)  is  well  known  in  nineteenth  century  English 
literature  as  a  poet,  but  more  particularly  as  a  critic  of  literature  and  of 
society.  He  twice  visited  America  on  lecture  tours — once  in  1883-1884  and 
again  in  1886 — and  it  was  during  the  first  of  these  visits  that  he  delivered 
his  notable  address  on  Emerson,  which  was  subsequently  published,  together 
with  others  of  his  lectures,  in  the  volume  entitled,  Discourses  in  America. 
The  high  opinion  which  Arnold  in  this  essay  expresses  for  Emerson  is  all 
the  more  convincing  because  it  is  entirely  unprejudiced.  Arnold's  discussion 
brings  out  the  fact  that  Emerson's  great  achievement  lay  in  impressing  upon 
Americans,  apart  from  all  theological  speculations,  the  supreme  importance 
of  the  higher  nature,  the  moral  life,  the  intellectual  being.  As  an  American 
critic,  George  Edward  Woodberry,  puts  it,  "He  was  closer  to  the  soil  in  his 
democracy,  nearer  to  the  plain  people  of  the  country,  than  any  other  man  of 
letters;  and  in  his  works  he  embodied  more  vitally  the  practical  ideal  of  the 
American — industrious,  successful,  self-reliant,  not  embarrassed  by  the  past, 
not  disturbed  by  the  future,  confident,  not  afraid.  .  .  .  The  fortune  of  the 
republic  was  for  him  not  accumulated  wealth  but  widespread  welfare.  He 
was  by  birth  a  patriot,  by  tradition  a  Puritan  democrat,  and  these  views 
were  natural  to  him.  His  Americanism  undoubtedly  endears  him  to  his 
countrymen.  But  it  is  not  within  narrow  limits  of  political  or  worldly  wisdom 
that  his  influence  and  teachings  have  their  effect;  but  in  the  invigoration  of 
the  personal  life  with  which  his  pages  are  electric."] 

Forty  years  ago,  when  I  was  an  undergraduate  at  Oxford, 
voices  were  in  the  air  there  which  haunt  my  memory  still. 
Happy  the  man  who  in  that  susceptible  season  of  youth  hears 
such  voices!  they  are  a  possession  to  him  forever.  No  such 

IMatthew  Arnold's  Discourses  in  America. 


86  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

voices  as  those  which  we  heard  in  our  youth  at  Oxford  are  sound- 
ing there  now.  Oxford  has  more  criticism  now,  more  knowledge, 
more  light;  but  such  voices  as  those  of  our  youth  it  has  no 
longer.  The  name  of  Cardinal  Newman  is  a  great  name  to  the 
imagination  still;  his  genius  and  his  style  are  still  things  of  power. 
But  he  is  over  eighty  years  old;  he  is  in  the  Oratory  at  Birming- 
ham; he  has  adopted,  for  the  doubts  and  difficulties  which  beset 
men's  minds  today,  a  solution  which,  to  speak  frankly,  is  im- 
possible. Forty  years  ago  he  was  in  the  very  prime  of  life;  he 
was  close  at  hand  to  us  at  Oxford;  he  was  preaching  in  St.  Mary's 
pulpit  every  Sunday;  he  seemed  about  to  transform  and  to 
renew  what  was  for  us  the  most  national  and  natural  institution 
in  the  world,  the  Church  of  England.  Who  could  resist  the 
charm  of  that  spiritual  apparition,  gliding  in  the  dim  afternoon 
light  through  the  aisles  of  St.  Mary's,  rising  into  the  pulpit,  and 
then,  in  the  most  entrancing  of  voices,  breaking  the  silence  with 
words  and  thoughts  which  were  a  religious  music — subtle, 
sweet,  mournful?  I  seem  to  hear  him  still,  saying:  "After  the 
fever  of  life,  after  wearinesses  and  sicknesses,  fightings  and  de- 
spondings,  langour  and  fretfulness,  struggling  and  succeeding; 
after  all  the  changes  and  chances  of  this  troubled,  unhealthy 
state — at  length  comes  death,  at  length  the  white  throne  of 
God,  at  length  the  beatific  vision."  Or,  if  we  followed  him  back 
to  his  seclusion  at  Littlemore,  that  dreary  village  by  the  London 
road,  and  to  the  house  of  retreat  and  the  church  which  he  built 
there — a  mean  house  such  as  Paul  might  have  lived  in  when  he 
was  tent-making  at  Ephesus,  a  church  plain  and  thinly  sown  with 
worshipers — who  could  resist  him  there  either,  welcoming  back 
to  the  severe  joys  of  church  fellowship,  and  of  daily  worship  and 
prayer,  the  firstlings  of  a  generation  which  had  well-nigh  for- 
gotten them?  Again  I  seem  to  hear  him:  "The  season  is  chill 
and  dark,  and  the  breath  of  the  morning  is  damp,  and  wor- 
shipers are  few;  but  all  this  befits  those  who  are  by  their  profes- 
sion pentitents  and  mourners,  watchers  and  pilgrims.  More 
dear  to  them  that  loneliness,  more  cheerful  that  severity,  and 
more  bright  that  gloom,  than  all  those  aids  and  appliances  of 
luxury  by  which  men  nowadays  attempt  to  make  prayer  less 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  87 

disagreeable  to  them.  True  faith  does  not  covet  comforts;  they 
who  realize  that  awful  day,  when  they  shall  see  Him  face  to 
face  whose  eyes  are  as  a  flame  of  fire,  will  as  little  bargain  to 
pray  pleasantly  now  as  they  will  think  of  doing  so  then." 

Somewhere  or  other  I  have  spoken  of  those  "last  enchant- 
ments" of  the  Middle  Age  which  Oxford  sheds  around  us,  and 
here  they  were!  But  there  were  other  voices  sounding  in  our 
ear  besides  Newman's.  There  was  the  puissant  voice  of  Carlyle; 
so  sorely  strained,  over-used,  and  misused  since,  but  then  fresh, 
comparatively  sound,  and  reaching  our  hearts  with  true,  pathetic 
eloquence.  Who  can  forget  the  emotion  of  receiving  in  its  first 
freshness  such  a  sentence  as  that  sentence  of  Carlyle  upon 
Edward  Irving,  then  just  dead:  "Scotland  sent  him  forth  a 
herculean  man;  our  mad  Babylon  wore  and  wasted  him  with  all 
her  engines — and  it  took  her  twelve  years!"  A  greater  voice 
still — the  greatest  voice  of  the  century — came  to  us  in  those 
youthful  years  through  Carlyle:  the  voice  of  Goethe.  To  this 
day — such  is  the  force  of  youthful  associations — I  read  the 
Wilhelm  Meister  with  more  pleasure  in  Carlyle's  translation  than 
in  the  original.  The  large,  liberal  view  of  human  life  in  Wilhelm 
Meister,  how  novel  it  was  to  the  Englishman  in  those  days !  and 
it  was  salutary,  too,  and  educative  for  him,  doubtless,  as  well  as 
novel.  But  what  moved  us  most  in  Wilhelm  Meister  was  that 
which,  after  all,  will  always  move  the  young  most — the  poetry, 
the  eloquence.  Never,  surely,  was  Carlyle's  prose  so  beautiful 
and  pure  as  in  his  rendering  of  the  Youths'  dirge  over  Mignon ! — 
"Well  is  our  treasure  now  laid  up,  the  fair  image  of  the  past. 
Here  sleeps  it  in  the  marble,  undecaying;  in  your  hearts,  also,  it 
lives,  it  works.  Travel,  travel,  back  into  life !  Take  along  with 
you  this  holy  earnestness,  for  earnestness  alone  makes  life 
eternity."  Here  we  had  the  voice  of  the  great  Goethe; — not  the 
stiff,  and  hindered,  and  frigid,  and  factitious  Goethe  who  speaks 
to  us  too  often  from  those  sixty  volumes  of  his,  but  of  the  great 
Goethe,  and  the  true  one. 

And  besides  those  voices,  there  came  to  us  in  that  old  Oxford 
time  a  voice  also  from  this  side  of  the  Atlantic — a  clear  and  pure 
voice,  which  for  my  ear,  at  any  rate,  brought  a  strain  as  new, 


88  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

and  moving,  and  unforgettable,  as  the  strain  of  Newman,  or 
Carlyle,  or  Goethe.  Mr.  Lowell  has  well  described  the  apparition 
of  Emerson  to  your  young  generation  here,  hi  that  distant  time 
of  which  I  am  speaking,  and  of  his  workings  upon  them.  He 
was  your  Newman,  your  man  of  soul  and  genius  visible  to  you 
hi  the  flesh,  speaking  to  your  bodily  ears,  a  present  object  for 
your  heart  and  imagination.  That  is  surely  the  most  potent  of 
all  influences!  nothing  can  come  up  to  it.  To  us  at  Oxford 
Emerson  was  but  a  voice  speaking  from  three  thousand  miles 
away.  But  so  well  he  spoke  that  from  that  time  forth  Boston 
Bay  and  Concord  were  names  invested  to  my  ear  with  a  senti- 
ment akin  to  that  which  invests  for  me  the  names  of  Oxford  and 
of  Weimar;  and  snatches  of  Emerson's  strain  fixed  themselves  in 
my  mind  as  imperishably  as  any  of  the  eloquent  words  which  I 
have  been  just  now  quoting.  "Then  dies  the  man  in  you;  then 
once  more  perish  the  buds  of  art,  poetry,  and  science,  as  they 
have  died  already  in  a  thousand  thousand  men."  "What  Plato 
has  thought,  he  may  think;  what  a  saint  has  felt,  he  may  feel; 
what  at  any  time  has  befallen  any  man,  he  can  understand." 
"Trust  thyself !  every  heart  vibrates  to  that  iron  string.  Accept 
the  place  the  Divine  Providence  has  found  for  you,  the  society 
of  your  contemporaries,  the  connection  of  events.  Great  men 
have  always  done  so,  and  confided  themselves  childlike  to  the 
genius  of  their  age;  betraying  their  perception  that  the  Eternal 
was  stirring  at  their  heart,  working  through  their  hands,  pre- 
dominating in  all  their  being.  And  we  are  now  men,  and  must 
accept  in  the  highest  spirit  the  same  transcendent  destiny;  and 
not  pinched  in  a  corner,  not  cowards  fleeing  before  a  revolution, 
but  redeemers  and  benefactors,  pious  aspirants  to  be  noble 
clay  plastic  under  the  Almighty  effort,  let  us  advance  and 
advance  on  chaos  and  the  dark!"  These  lofty  sentences  of 
Emerson,  and  a  hundred  others  of  like  strain,  I  never  have  lost 
out  of  my  memory;  I  never  can  lose  them. 

At  last  I  find  myself  in  Emerson's  own  country,  and  looking 
upon  Boston  Bay.  Naturally  I  revert  to  the  friend  of  my  youth. 
It  is  not  always  pleasant  to  ask  oneself  questions  about  the 
friends  of  one's  youth;  they  cannot  always  well  support  it. 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  89 

Carlyle,  for  instance,  in  my  judgment,  cannot  well  support  such 
a  return  upon  him.  Yet  we  should  make  the  return;  we  should 
part  with  our  illusions;  we  should  know  the  truth.  When  I  come 
to  this  country,  where  Emerson  now  counts  for  so  much,  and 
where  such  high  claims  are  made  for  him,  I  pull  myself  together, 
and  ask  myself  what  the  truth  about  this  object  of  my  youthful 
admiration  really  is.  Improper  elements  often  come  into  our 
estimate  of  men.  We  have  lately  seen  a  German  critic  make 
Goethe  the  greatest  of  all  poets,  because  Germany  is  now  the 
greatest  of  military  powers,  and  wants  a  poet  to  match.  Then, 
too,  America  is  a  young  country;  and  young  countries,  like 
young  persons,  are  apt  sometimes  to  evince  in  their  literary 
judgments  a  want  of  scale  and  measure.  I  set  myself,  therefore, 
resolutely  to  come  at  a  real  estimate  of  Emerson,  and  with  a 
leaning  even  to  strictness  rather  than  to  indulgence.  That  is  the 
safer  course.  Time  has  no  indulgence;  any  veils  of  illusion  which 
we  may  have  left  around  an  object  because  we  loved  it,  Time  is 
sure  to  strip  away. 

I  was  reading  the  other  day  a  notice  of  Emerson  by  a  serious 
and  interesting  American  critic.  Fifty  or  sixty  passages  in 
Emerson's  poems,  says  this  critic — who  had  doubtless  himself 
been  nourished  on  Emerson's  writings,  and  held  them  justly 
dear — fifty  or  sixty  passages  from  Emerson's  poems  have  already 
entered  into  English  speech  as  matter  of  familiar  and  universally 
current  quotation.  Here  is  a  specimen  of  that  personal  sort  of 
estimate  which,  for  my  part,  even  in  speaking  of  authors  dear 
to  me,  I  would  try  to  avoid.  What  is  the  kind  of  phrase  of  which 
we  may  fairly  say  that  it  has  entered  into  English  speech  as 
matter  of  familiar  quotation?  Such  a  phrase,  surely,  as  the 
"Patience  on  a  monument"  of  Shakspere;  as  the  "Darkness 
visible"  of  Milton;  as  the  "Where  ignorance  is  bliss"  of  Gray. 
Of  not  one  single  passage  in  Emerson's  poetry  can  it  be  truly 
said  that  it  has  become  a  familiar  quotation  like  phrases  of 
this  kind.  It  is  not  enough  that  it  should  be  familiar  to  his 
admirers,  familiar  hi  New  England,  familiar  even  throughout 
the  United  States;  it  must  be  familiar  to  all  readers  and  lovers 
of  English  poetry.  Of  not  more  than  one  or  two  passages  in 


9o  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

Emerson's  poetry  can  it,  I  think,  be  truly  said,  that  they  stand 
ever-present  in  the  memory  of  even  many  lovers  of  English 
poetry.  A  great  number  of  passages  from  his  poetry  are  no 
doubt  perfectly  familiar  to  the  mind  and  lips  of  the  critic  whom 
I  have  mentioned,  and  perhaps  a  wide  circle  of  American  readers. 
But  this  is  a  very  different  thing  from  being  matter  of  universal 
quotation,  like  the  phrases  of  the  legitimate  poets. 

And,  hi  truth,  one  of  the  legitimate  poets,  Emerson,  in  my 
opinion,  is  not.  His  poetry  Js-interesting,  it  makes  one  think; 
but  it  is  not  the  poetry  of  one  of  the  born  poets.  J  say  it  of  him 
wiffi^eluctance,  although  I  am  sure  that  he  would  have  said  it 
of  himself;  but  I  say  it  with  reluctance,  because  I  dislike  giv- 
ing pain  to  his  admirers,  and  because  all  my  own  wish,  too,  is 
to  say  of  him  what  is  favorable.  But  I  regard  myself,  not  as 
speaking  to  please  Emerson's  admirers,  not  as  speaking  to  please 
myself;  but  rather,  I  repeat,  as  communing  with  Time  and 
Nature  concerning  the  productions  of  this  beautiful  and  rare 
spirit,  and  as  resigning  what  of  him  is  by  their  unalterable  decree 
touched  with  caducity,  in  order  the  better  to  mark  and  secure 
that  in  him  which  is  immortal. 

Milton  says  that  poetry  ought  to  be  simple,  sensuous,  im- 
passioned. Welly^merson'^pnetry  is_seldorn_eil^er_smple, 
or  sensuous^  or  impassioned._Jn  general  it  lacks-directness;  4t 
lacks  concretenessj_it_lacks  energy.  His  grammar  is  ofteiL-em- 
barrassedyin  particular,  the  want  of  clearly-marked  distinction 
between  the  subject  and  the  object  of  his  sentence  is  a  frequent 
causeuf  obscurityln^him.  A  poem  which  shall  be  a  plain^ forcible, 
inevTtable^whole  he  hardly  ever  produces.  Such  good  work  as 
the  noblelirielTgTaven  o'n  the  Concord  Monument  is  the  excep- 
tion-with  him;  such  ineffective  work  as  the  Fourth  of  July  Ode 
or  the  Boston  Hymn  is  the  rule.  Even  passages  and  single  lines 
of  thorough  plainness  and  commanding  force  are  rare  in  his 
poetry.  They  exist,  of  course;  but  when  we  meet  with  them 
they  give  us  a  slight  shock  of  surprise,  so  little  has  Emerson 
accustomed  us  to  them.  Let  me  have  the  pleasure  of  quoting 
one  or  two  of  these  exceptional  passages: 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  91 

"So  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 

So  near  is  God  to  man, 
When  Duty  whispers  low,  Thou  must, 
The  youth  replies,  /  can" 

Or  again  this: 

"Though  love  repine  and  reason  chafe, 
There  came  a  voice  without  reply: 
"Tis  man's  perdition  to  be  safe, 
When  for  the  truth  he  ought  to  die.' " 

Excellent!  but  how  seldom  do  we  get  from  him  a  strain 
blown  so  clearly  and  firmly!  Take  another  passage  where  his 
strain  has  not  only  clearness,  it  has  also  grace  and  beauty: 

"And  ever,  when  the  happy  child 
In  May  beholds  the  blooming  wild, 
And  hears  in  heaven  the  bluebird  sing, 
'Onward,'  he  cries,  'your  baskets  bring! 
In  the  next  field  is  air  more  mild, 
And  in  yon  hazy  west  is  Eden's  balmier  spring.' " 

In  the  style  and  cadence  here  there  is  a  reminiscence,  I  think, 
of  Gray;  at  any  rate  the  pureness,  grace,  and  beauty  of  these 
lines  are  worthy  even  of  Gray.  But  Gray  holds  his  high  rank  as 
a  poet,  not  merely  by  the  beauty  and  grace  of  passages  in  his 
poems;  not  merely  by  a  diction  generally  pure  in  an  age  of  im- 
pure diction:  he  holds  it,  above  all,  by  the  power  and  skill  with 
which  the  evolution  of  his  poems  is  conducted.  Here  is  his 
grand  superiority  to  Collins,  whose  diction  in  his  best  poem,  the 
Ode  to  Evening,  is  purer  than  Gray's;  but  then  the  Ode  to  Evening 
is  like  a  river  which  loses  itself  in  the  sand,  whereas  Gray's  best 
poems  have  an  evolution  sure  and  satisfying.  Emerson's  May- 
Day,  from  which  I  just  now  quoted,  has  no  real  evolution  at  all; 
it  is  a  series  of  observations.  And,  in  general,  his  poems  have  no 
evolution.  Take,  for  example,  his  Titmouse.  Here  he  has  an 
excellent  subject;  a^nd  his  observation  of  Nature,  moreovp-j,  is 
always  marvelously  close  and  fine.  But  comparewhat  he  makes 
of  his  meeting  with  Bis  titmoustTwith  whaT"Cowper  oTjSunis 
makes  o£tEjli£e^kind,  of  incident!^ One  never  quite  amves~at 


92  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

learning  what  the  titmouse  actually  did  for  him  at  all,  though 
one  feels  a  strong  interest  and  desire  to  learn  it;  but  one  is 
reduced  to  guessing,  and  cannot  be  quite  sure  that  after  all  one 
has  guessed  right.  He  is  not  plain  and  concrete  enough — hi 
other  words,  not  poet  enough — to  be  able  to  tell  us.  And  a 
failure  of  this  kind  goes  through  almost  all  his  verse,  keeps  him 
amid  symbolism  and  allusion  and  the  fringes  of  things,  and,  in 
spite  of  his  spiritual  power,  deeply  impairs  his  poetic  value. 
Through  the  inestimable  virtue  of  concreteness,  a  simple  poem 
like  The  Bridge  of  Longfellow,  or  the  School  Days  of  Mr.  Whittier, 
is  of  more  poetic  worth,  perhaps,  than  all  the  verse  of  Emerson. 
I  do  not,  jhen,  place  Emerson  among  the  great  poets.  But  I 
go  further,  and  say  that  JQIo  ppt  place  him  among  the  great 
writers,  the  great  men  of  letters.  Who  are  the  grsat^men  of 
letters?  They  aremen  like  CiceroTHato^Bacpn,  Pascal,  Swift, 
Voltaire— writers  wjttyjn  the  nrsFplace^a  genius  and  instinct 
for  style;  writers  whose  prose  is  by  a  kind  of  native  necessity 
true  and  sound.  Now  the  style  of  Emerson,  like  the  style  of 
his  transcendentalist  friends  and  of  the  Dial  so  continually — the 
style  of  Emerson  is  capable  of  falling  into  a  strain  like  this, 
which  I  take  from  the  beginning  of  his  Essay  on  Love:  "Every 
soul  is  a  celestial  being  to  every  other  soul.  The  heart  has  its 
sabbaths  and  jubilees,  in  which  the  world  appears  as  a  hymeneal 
feast,  and  all  natural  sounds  and  the  circle  of  the  seasons  are 
erotic  odes  and  dances."  Emerson  altered  this  sentence  in  the 
later  editions.  Like  Wordsworth,  he  was  in  later  hie  fond  of 
altering;  and  in  general  his  later  alterations,  like  those  of 
Wordsworth,  are  not  improvements.  He  softened  the  passage 
in  question,  however,  though  without  really  mending  it.  I  quote 
it  in  its  original  and  strongly  marked  form.  Arthur  Stanley 
used  to  relate  that  about  the  year  1840,  being  in  conversation 
with  some  Americans  in  quarantine  at  Malta,  and  thinking  to 
please  them,  he  declared  his  warm  admiration  for  Emerson's 
Essays,  then  recently  published.  However,  the  Americans 
shook  their  heads,  and  told  him  that  for  home  taste  Emerson 
was  decidedly  too  greeny.  We  will  hope,  for  their  sakes,  that  the 
sort  of  thing  they  had  in  their  heads  was  such  writing  as  I  have 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  93 

just  quoted.    Unsound  it  is,  indeed,  and  in  a  style  almost  im- 
possible to  a  born  man  of  letters. 

It  is  a  curious  thing,  that  quality  of  style  which  marks  the 
great  writer,  the  born  man  of  letters.  It  resides  in  the  whole 
tissue  of  one's  work,  and  of  his  work  regarded  as  a  composition 
for  literary  purposes.  Brilliant  and  powerful  passages  in  a  man's 
writings  do  not  prove  his  possession  of  it;  it  lies  in  their  whole 
tissue.  Emerson  has  passages  of  noble  and  pathetic  eloquence, 
such  as  those  which  I  quoted  at  the  beginning;  he  has  passages 
of  shrewd  and  felicitous  wit;  he  has  crisp  epigram;  he  has  pas- 
sages of  exquisitely  touched  observation  of  nature.  Yet  he  is  not 
a  great  writer;  his  style  has  not  the  requisite  wholeness  of  good 
tissue.  Even  Carlyle  is  not,  in  my  judgment,  a  great  writer. 
He  has  surpassingly  powerful  qualities  of  expression,  far  more 
powerful  than  Emerson's,  and  reminding  one  of  the  gifts  of 
expression  of  the  great  poets — of  even  Shakspere  himself. 
What  Emerson  so  admirably  says  of  Carlyle's  "devouring  eyes 
and  portraying  hand,"  "those  thirsty  eyes,  those  portrait-eating, 
portrait-painting  eyes  of  thine,  those  fatal  perceptions,"  is 
thoroughly  true.  What  a  description  is  Carlyle's  of  the  first 
publisher  of  Sartor  Resartus,  "to  whom  the  idea  of  a  new  edition 
of  Sartor  is  frightful,  or  rather  ludicrous,  unimaginable;"  of  this 
poor  Fraser,  in  whose  "wonderful  world  of  Tory  pamphleteers, 
conservative  Younger-brothers,  Regent  Street  loungers,  Crock- 
ford  gamblers,  Irish  Jesuits,  drunken  reporters,  and  miscella- 
neous unclean  persons  (whom  niter  and  much  soap  will  not  wash 
clean),  not  a  soul  has  expressed  the  smallest  wish  that  way!" 
What  a  portrait,  again,  of  the  well-beloved  John  Sterling !  "One, 
and  the  best,  of  a  small  class  extant  here,  who,  nigh  drowning  in 
a  black  wreck  of  Infidelity  (lighted  up  by  some  glare  of  Radi- 
calism only,  now  growing  dim  too),  and  about  to  perish,  saved 
themselves  into  a  Coleridgian  Shovel-Hattedness."  What 
touches  hi  the  invitation  of  Emerson  to  London!  "You  shall 
see  blockheads  by  the  million;  Pickwick  himself  shall  be  visible — 
innocent  young  Dickens,  reserved  for  a  questionable  fate.  The 
great  Wordsworth  shall  talk  till  you  yourself  pronounce  him  to 
be  a  bore.  Southey's  complexion  is  still  healthy  mahogany 


94  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

brown,  with  a  fleece  of  white  hair,  and  eyes  that  seem  running  at 
full  gallop.  Leigh  Hunt,  man  of  genius  hi  the  shape  of  a  cock- 
ney, is  my  near  neighbor,  with  good  humor  and  no  common 
sense;  old  Rogers  with  his  pale  head,  white,  bare,  and  cold  as 
snow,  with  those  large  blue  eyes,  cruel,  sorrowful,  and  that 
sardonic  shelf  chin."  How  inimitable  it  all  is!  And,  finally  for 
one  must  not  go  on  forever,  this  version  of  a  London  Sunday, 
with  the  public  houses  closed  during  the  hours  of  divine  service ! 
"It  is  silent  Sunday;  the  populace  not  yet  admitted  to  their 
beer-shops,  till  the  respectabilities  conclude  their  rubric  mum- 
meries— a  much  more  audacious  feat  than  beer."  Yet  even 
Carlyle  is  not,  hi  my  judgment,  to  be  called  a  great  writer;  one 
cannot  think  of  ranking  him  with  men  like  Cicero  and  Plato  and 
Swift  and  Voltaire.  Emerson  freely  promises  to  Carlyle  im- 
mortality for  his  histories.  They  will  not  have  it.  Why?  Because 
the  materials  furnished  to  him  by  that  devouring  eye  of  his,  and 
that  portraying  hand,  were  not  wrought  hi  and  subdued  by 
him  to  what  his  work,  regarded  as  a  composition  for  literary 
purposes,  required.  Occurring  hi  conversation,  breaking  out  in 
familiar  correspondence,  they  are  magnificent,  inimitable; 
nothing  more  is  required  of  them;  thus  thrown  out  anyhow,  they 
serve  their  turn  and  fulfil  their  function.  And,  therefore,  I 
should  not  wonder  if  really  Carlyle  lived,  in  the  long  run,  by 
such  an  invaluable  record  as  that  correspondence  between  him 
and  Emerson,  of  which  we  owe  the  publication  to  Mr.  Charles 
Norton — by  this  and  not  by  his  works,  as  Johnson  lives  hi 
Boswell,  not  by  his  works.  For  Carlyle's  sallies,  as  the  staple  of 
a  literary  work,  become  wearisome;  and  as  time  more  and  more 
applies  to  Carlyle's  works  its  stringent  test,  this  will  be  felt 
more  and  more.  Shakspere,  Moliere,  Swift — they,  too,  had, 
like  Carlyle,  the  devouring  eye  and  the  portraying  hand.  But 
they  are  great  literary  masters,  they  are  supreme  writers,  be- 
cause they  knew  how  to  work  into  a  literary  composition  their 
materials,  and  to  subdue  them  to  the  purposes  of  literary  effect. 
Carlyle  is  too  willful  for  this,  too  turbid,  too  vehement. 

You  will  think  I  deal  in  nothing  but  negatives.  I  have  been 
saying  that  Emerson  is  not  one  of  the  great  poets,  the  great 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  95 

writers.  He  has  not  their  quality  of  style.  He  is,  however,  the 
propounder  of  a  philosophy.  The  Platonic  dialogues  afford  us 
the  example  of  exquisite  literary  form  and  treatment  given  to 
philosophical  ideas.  Plato  is  at  once  a  great  literary  man  and  a 
great  philosopher.  If  we  speak  carefully,  we  cannot  call  Aristotle 
or  Spinoza  or  Kant  great  literary  men,  or  their  productions 
great  literary  works.  But  their  work  is  arranged  with  such  con- 
structive power  that  they  build  a  philosophy,  and  are  justly 
called  great  philosophical  writers.  Emerson  cannot,  I  think,  be 
called  with  justice  a  great  philosophical  writer.  He  cannot 
build;  his  arrangement  of  philosophical  ideas  has  no  progress  in 
it,  no  evolution ;  he  does  not  construct  a  philosophy.  Emerson 
himself  knew  the  defects  of  his  method,  or  rather  want  of  method, 
very  well;  indeed,  he  and  Carlyle  criticise  themselves  and  one 
another  in  a  way  which  leaves  little  for  anyone  else  to  do  in  the 
way  of  formulating  their  defects.  Carlyle  formulates  perfectly 
the  defects  of  his  friend's  poetic  and  literary  production  when 
he  says  of  the  Dial:  "For  me  it  is  too  ethereal,  speculative, 
theoretic;  I  will  have  all  things  condense  themselves,  take  shape 
and  body,  if  they  are  to  have  my  sympathy."  And,  speaking  of 
Emerson's  Orations,  he  says:  "I  long  to  see  some  concrete 
Thing,  some  Event,  Man's  Life,  American  Forest,  or  piece  of 
Creation,  which  this  Emerson  loves  and  wonders  at,  well 
Emersonized — depictured  by  Emerson,  filled  with  the  life  of 
Emerson,  and  cast  forth  from  him,  then  to  live  by  itself.  If  these 
Orations  balk  me  of  this,  how  profitable  soever  they  may  be  for 
others,  I  will  not  love  them."  Emerson  himself  formulates  per- 
fectly the  defect  of  his  own  philosophical  productions  when  he 
speaks  of  his  "formidable  tendency  to  the  lapidary  style.  I 
build  my  house  of  bowlders."  "Here  I  sit  and  read  and  write," 
he  says  again,  "with  very  little  system,  and,  as  far  as  regards 
composition,  with  the  most  fragmentary  result;  paragraphs  in- 
comprehensible, each  sentence  an  infinitely  repellent  particle." 
Nothing  can  be  truer;  and  the  work  of  a  Spinoza  or  Kant,  of  the 
men  who  stand  as  great  philosophical  writers,  does  not  proceed 
in  this  wise. 

Some  people  ™\\  H1  y™i  that  Ernerfton's  poetry,  indeed,  is 


96  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

tgo  abstract,  and  his  philosophy__tpp_  vague,  but  that  his  best 
work  is  his  English  Traits.  The  English  Traits  are  beyond 
question  very  pleasant  reading.  It  is  easy  to  praise  them,  easy 
to  commend  the  author  of  them.  But  I  insist  on  always  trying 
Emerson's  work  by  the  highest  standards.  I  esteem  him  too 
much  to  try  his  work  by  any  other.  Tried  by  the  highest  stand- 
ards, and  compared  with  the  work  of  the  excellent  markers  and 
recorders  of  the  traits  of  human  life — of  writers  like  Montaigne, 
La  Bruyere,  Addison — the  English  Traits  will  not  stand  the 
comparison.  Emerson's  observation  has  not  the  disinterested 
quality  of  the  observation  of  these  masters.  It  is  the  observation 
of  a  man  systematically  benevolent,  as  Hawthorne's  observation 
in  Our  Old  Home  is  the  work  of  a  man  chagrined.  Hawthorne's 
literary  talent  is  of  the  first  order.  His  subjects  are  generally 
not  to  me  subjects  of  the  highest  interest;  but  his  literary  tal- 
ent is  of  the  first  order,  the  finest,  I  think,  which  America  has 
yet  produced — finer,  by  much,  than  Emerson's.  Yet  Our  Old 
Home  is  not  a  masterpiece  any  more  than  English  Traits.  In 
neither  of  them  is  the  observer  disinterested  enough.  The 
author's  attitude  in  each  of  these  cases  can  easily  be  under- 
stood and  defended.  Hawthorne  was  a  sensitive  man,  so  situated 
in  England  that  he  was  perpetually  in  contact  with  the  British 
Philistine;  and  the  British  Philistine  is  a  trying  personage. 
Emerson's  systematic  benevolence  comes  from  what  he  himself 
calls  somewhere  his  "persistent  optimism;"  and  his  persistent 
optimism  is  the  root  of  his  greatness  and  the  source  of  his 
charm.  But  "still  let  us  keep  our  literary  conscience  true,  and 
judge  every  kind  of  literary  work  by  the  laws  really  proper  to 
it.  The  kind  of  work  attempted  in  the  English  Traits  and  in 
Our  Old  Home  is  work  which  cannot  be  done  perfectly  with  a 
bias  such  as  that  given  by  Emerson's  optimism  or  by  Haw- 
thorne's chagrin.  Consequently,  neither  English  Traits  nor  Our 
Old  Home  is  a  work  of  perfection  in  its  kind. 

Not  with  the  Miltons  and  Grays,  not  with  the  Platos  and 
Spinozas,  not  with  the  Swifts  and  Voltaires,  not  with  the 
Montaignes  and  Addisons,  can  we  rank  Emerson.  His  work  of 
various  kinds,  when  one  compares  it  with  the  work  done  in  a 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  97 

corresponding  kind  by  these  masters,  fails  to  stand  the  com- 
parison. No  man  could  see  this  clearer  than  Emerson  himself. 
It  is  hard  not  to  feel  despondency  when  we  contemplate  our 
failures  and  shortcomings;  and  Emerson,  the  least  self -nattering 
and  the  most  modest  of  men,  saw  so  plainly  what  was  lacking 
to  him  that  he  had  his  moments  of  despondency.  "Alas,  my 
friend,"  he  writes  in  reply  to  Carlyle,  who  had  exhorted  him  to 
creative  work — "Alas,  my  friend,  I  can  do  no  such  gay  thing  as 
you  say.  I  do  not  belong  to  the  poets,  but  only  to  a  low  depart- 
ment of  literature — the  reporters;  suburban  men."  He  dep- 
recated his  friend's  praise;  praise  "generous  to  a  fault,"  he  calls 
it;  praise  "generous  to  the  shaming  of  me — cold,  fastidious, 
ebbing  person  that  I  am.  Already  in  a  former  letter  you  had 
said  too  much  good  of  my  poor  little  arid  book,  which  is  as  sand 
to  my  eyes.  I  can  only  say  that  I  heartily  wish  the  book  were 
better;  and  I  must  try  and  deserve  so  much  favor  from  the 
kind  gods  by  a  bolder  and  truer  living  in  the  months  to  come — 
such  as  may  perchance  one  day  release  and  invigorate  this 
cramped  hand  of  mine.  When  I  see  how  much  work  is  to  be  done; 
what  room  for  a  poet,  for  any  spiritualist,  in  this  great  intelli- 
gent, sensual,  and  avaricious  America — I  lament  my  fumbling 
fingers  and  stammering  tongue."  Again,  as  late  as  1870,  he 
writes  to  Carlyle:  "There  is  no  example  of  constancy  like  yours, 
and  it  always  stings  my  stupor  into  temporary  recovery  and 
wonderful  resolution  to  accept  the  noble  challenge.  But  'the 
strong  hours  conquer  us;'  and  I  am  the  victim  of  miscellany — 
miscellany  of  designs,  vast  debility,  and  procrastination." 
The  forlorn  note  belonging  to  the  phrase,  "vast  debility,"  recalls 
that  saddest  and  most  discouraged  of  writers,  the  author  of 
Obermann,  Senancour,  with  whom  Emerson  has  in  truth  a  cer- 
tain kinship.  He  has,  in  common  with  Senancour,  his  pureness, 
his  passion  for  nature,  his  single  eye;  and  here  we  find  him  con- 
fessing, like  Senancour,  a  sense  in  himself  of  sterility  and  im- 
potence. 

And  now  I  think  I  have  cleared  the  ground.  I  have  given  up 
to  envious  Time  as  much  of  Emerson  as  Time  can  fairly  expect  ever 


NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 


to  obtain.  We  hgygjriotjn  Emerson  ft  great.  pnpt,  a  grrp-a>-writpT; 
a  great  phtiosophy  maker,  His  relation  to  us  is  not  that  of  one 
of  those  personages;  yet  it  is  a  relation  of,  I  think,  even  superior 
importance.  His  relation  to  us  is  more  like  that  of  the  Roman 
Emperor,  Marcus  Aurelius.  Marcus  Aurelius  is  not  a  great 
writer,  a  great  philosophy  maker;  he  is  the  friend  and  aider  of 
those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit.  Emerson  is  the  same.  He  is 
the  friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit.  All 
the  points  in  thinking  which  are  necessary  for  this  purpose  he 
takes;  but  he  does  not  combine  them  into  a  system,  nor  present 
them  as  a  regular  philosophy.  Combined  in  a  system  by  a  man 
with  the  requisite  talent  for  this  kind  of  thing,  they  would  be 
less  useful  than  as  Emerson  gives  them  to  us;  and  the  man  with 
the  talent  so  to  systematize  them  would  be  less  impressive 
than  Emerson.  They  do  very  well  as  they  now  stand  —  like 
"bowlders,"  as  he  says  —  in  "paragraphs  incompressible,  each 
sentence  an  infinitely  repellent  particle."  In  such  sentences  his 
main  points  recur  again  and  again,  and  become  fixed  in  the 
memory. 

We  all  know  them.  First  and  foremost,  character.  Character 
is  everything.  "That  which  all  things  tend  to  educe  —  which 
freedom,  cultivation,  intercourse,  revolutions,  go  to  form  and 
deliver  —  is  character."  Character  and  self-reliance.  "Trust 
thyself!  every  heart  vibrates  to  that  iron  string."  And  yet  we 
have  our  being  in  a  not  ourselves.  "There  is  a  power  above  and 
behind  us,  and  we  are  the  channels  of  its  communications."  But 
our  lives  must  be  pitched  higher.  "Life  must  be  lived  on  a  higher 
plane;  we  must  go  up  to  a  higher  platform,  to  which  we  are 
always  invited  to  ascend;  there  the  whole  scene  changes."  The 
good  we  need  is  forever  close  to  us,  though  we  attain  it  not. 
"On  the  brink  of  the  waters  of  life  and  truth,  we  are  miserably 
dying."  This  good  is  close  to  us,  moreover,  in  our  daily  life, 
and  in  the  familiar,  homely  places.  "The  unremitting  retention 
of  simple  and  high  sentiments  in  obscure  duties  —  that  is  the 
maximum  for  us.  Let  us  be  poised  and  wise,  and  our  own  today. 
Let  us  treat  the  men  and  women  well  —  treat  them  as  if  they  were 
real;  perhaps  they  are.  Men  live  in  their  fancy,  like  drunkards 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  99 

whose  hands  are  too  soft  and  tremulous  for  successful  labor.  I 
settle  myself  ever  firmer  hi  the  creed,  that  we  should  not  post- 
pone and  refer  and  wish,  but  do  broad  justice  where  we  are,  by 
whomsoever  we  deal  with;  accepting  our  actual  companions  and 
circumstances,  however  humble  or  odious,  as  the  mystic  officials 
to  whom  the  universe  has  delegated  its  whole  pleasure  for  us. 
Massachusetts,  Connecticut  River,  and  Boston  Bay,  you  think 
paltry  places,  and  the  ear  loves  names  of  foreign  and  classic 
topography.  But  here  we  are;  and  if  we  will  tarry  a  little  we 
may  come  to  learn  that  here  is  best.  See  to  it  only  that  thyself 
is  here."  Furthermore,  the  good  is  close  to  us  all.  "I  resist  the 
skepticism  of  our  education  and  of  our  educated  men.  I  do  not 
believe  that  the  differences  of  opinion  and  character  in  men  are 
organic.  I  do  not  recognize,  besides  the  class  of  the  good  and 
the  wise,  a  permanent  class  of  skeptics,  or  a  class  of  conserva- 
tives, or  of  malignants,  or  of  materialists.  I  do  not  believe  in 
the  classes.  Every  man  has  a  call  of  the  power  to  do  something 
unique."  Exclusiveness  is  deadly.  "The  exclusive  hi  social  life 
does  not  see  that  he  excludes  himself  from  enjoyment  in  the 
attempt  to  appropriate  it.  The  exclusionist  in  religion  does  not 
see  that  he  shuts  the  door  of  Heaven  on  himself  in  striving  to 
shut  out  others.  Treat  men  as  pawns  and  ninepins,  and  you 
shall  suffer  as  well  as  they.  If  you  leave  out  their  heart  you 
shall  lose  your  own.  The  selfish  man  suffers  more  from  his 
selfishness  than  he  from  whom  that  selfishness  withholds  some 
important  benefit."  A  sound  nature  will  be  inclined  to  refuse 
ease  and  self-indulgence.  "To  live  with  some  rigor  of  temperance, 
or  some  extreme  of  generosity,  seems  to  be  an  asceticism  which 
common  good-nature  would  appoint  to  those  who  are  at  ease 
and  in  plenty,  in  sign  that  they  feel  a  brotherhood  with  the 
great  multitude  of  suffering  men."  Compensation,  finally,  is  the 
great  law  of  life;  it  is  everywhere,  it  is  sure,  and  there  is  no 
escape  from  it.  This  is  that  "law  alive  and  beautiful,  which 
works  over  our  heads  and  under  our  feet.  Pitiless,  it  avails 
itself  of  our  success  when  we  obey  it,  and  of  our  ruin  when  we 
contravene  it.  We  are  all  secret  believers  in  it.  It  rewards  actions 
after  their  nature.  The  reward  of  a  thing  well  done  is  to  have 


ioo  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

done  it.    The  thief  steals  from  himself,  the  swindler  swindles 
himself.   You  must  pay  at  last  your  own  debt." 

This  is  tonic  indeed!  And  let  no  one  object  that  it  is  too 
general;  that  more  practical,  positive  direction  is  what  we  mean; 
that  Emerson's  optimism,  self-reliance,  and  indifference  to  favor- 
able conditions  for  our  life  and  growth  have  in  them  something 
of  danger.  "Trust  thyself;"  "what  attracts  my  attention  shall 
have  it;"  "though  thou  shouldest  walk  the  world  over  thou 
shalt  not  be  able  to  find  a  condition  inopportune  or  ignoble;" 
"what  we  call  vulgar  society  is  that  society  whose  poetry  is  not 
yet  written,  but  which  you  shall  presently  make  as  enviable 
and  renowed  as  any."  With  maxims  like  these,  we  surely,  it 
may  be  said,  run  some  risk  of  being  made  too  well  satisfied  with 
our  own  actual  self  and  state,  however  crude  and  imperfect 
they  may  be.  "Trust  thyself?"  It  may  be  said  that  the  common 
American  or  Englishman  is  more  than  enough  disposed  already 
to  trust  himself.  I  often  reply,  when  our  sectarians  are  praised 
for  following  conscience:  Our  people  are  very  good  in  following 
their  conscience;  where  they  are  not  so  good  is  in  ascertaining 
whether  their  conscience  tells  them  right.  "What  attracts  my 
attention  shall  have  it?"  Well,  that  is  our  people's  plea  when 
they  run  after  the  Salvation  Army,  and  desire  Messrs.  Moody 
and  Sankey.  "Thou  shalt  not  be  able  to  find  a  condition  in- 
opportune or  ignoble?"  But  think  of  the  turn  of  the  good  people 
of  our  race  for  producing  a  life  of  hideousness  and  immense 
ennui;  think  of  that  specimen  of  your  own  New  England  life 
which  Mr.  Howells  gives  us  in  one  of  his  charming  stories  which 
I  was  reading  lately;  think  of  the  life  of  that  ragged  New  England 
farm  in  the  Lady  of  the  Aroostook;  think  of  Deacon  Blood,  and 
Aunt  Maria,  and  the  straight-backed  chairs  with  black  horse- 
hair seats,  and  Ezra  Perkins  with  perfect  self-reliance  depositing 
his  travelers  in  the  snow !  I  can  truly  say  that  hi  the  little  which 
I  have  seen  of  the  life  of  New  England,  I  am  more  struck  with 
what  has  been  achieved  than  with  the  crudeness  and  failure. 
But  no  doubt  there  is  still  a  great  deal  of  crudeness  also.  Your 
own  novelists  say  there  is,  and  I  suppose  they  say  true.  In  the 
New  England,  as  hi  the  Old,  our  people  have  to  learn,  I  suppose, 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  tot 

not  that  their  modes  of  life  are  beautiful  and  excellent  already; 
they  have  rather  to  learn  that  they  must  transform  them. 

To  adopt  this  line  of  objection  to  Emerson's  deliverances 
would,  however,  be  unjust.  In  the  first  place,  Emerson's  points 
are  in  themselves  true,  if  understood  in  a  certain  high  sense; 
they  are  true  and  fruitful.  And  the  right  work  to  be  done,  at 
the  hour  when  he  appeared,  was  to  affirm  them  generally  and 
absolutely.  Only  thus  could  he  break  through  the  hard  and 
fast  barrier  of  narrow,  fixed  ideas,  which  he  found  confronting 
him,  and  win  an  entrance  for  new  ideas.  Had  he  attempted 
developments  which  may  now  strike  us  as  expedient,  he  would 
have  excited  fierce  antagonism,  and  probably  effected  little  or 
nothing.  The  time  might  come  for  doing  other  work  later,  but 
the  work  which  Emerson  did  was  the  right  work  to  be  done  then. 

In  the  second  place,  strong  as  was  Emerson's  optimism,  and 
unconquerable  as  was  his  belief  in  a  good  result  to  emerge  from 
all  which  he  saw  going  on  around  him,  no  misanthropical  satirist 
ever  saw  shortcomings  and  absurdities  more  clearly  than  he  did, 
or  exposed  them  more1  courageously.  When  he  sees  "the  mean- 
ness," as  he  calls  it,  "of  American  politics,"  he  congratulates 
Washington  on  being  "long  already  happily  dead,"  on  being 
"wrapt  in  his  shroud  and  forever  safe."  With  how  firm  a 
touch  he  delineates  the  faults  of  your  two  great  political  parties 
of  forty  years  ago !  The  Democrats,  he  says,  "have  not  at  heart 
the  ends  which  give  to  the  name  of  democracy  what  hope  and 
virtue  are  in  it.  The  spirit  of  our  American  radicalism  is  de- 
structive and  aimless;  it  is  not  loving;  it  has  no  ulterior  and  divine 
ends,  but  is  destructive  only  out  of  hatred  and  selfishness.  On 
the  other  side,  the  conservative  party,  composed  of  the  most 
moderate,  able,  and  cultivated  part  of  the  population,  is  timid, 
and  merely  defensive  of  property.  It  vindicates  no  right,  it 
aspires  to  no  real  good,  it  brands  no  crime,  it  proposes  no  generous 
policy.  From  neither  party,  when  in  power,  has  the  world  any 
benefit  to  expect  in  science,  art,  or  humanity,  at  all  commen- 
surate with  the  resources  of  the  nation."  Then  with  what  subtle 
though  kindly  irony  he  follows  the  gradual  withdrawal  in  New 
England,  hi  the  last  half  century,  of  tender  consciences  from  the 


io2  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

social  organizations — the  bent  for  experiments  such  as  that  of 
Brook  Farm  and  the  like — follows  it  in  all  its  "dissidence  of 
dissent  and  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  religion!"  He  even 
loves  to  rally  the  New  Englander  on  his  philanthropical  activity, 
and  to  find  his  beneficence  and  its  institutions  a  bore!  "Your 
miscellaneous  popular  charities,  the  education  at  college  of  fools, 
the  building  of  meetinghouses  to  the  vain  end  to  which  many  of 
these  now  stand,  alms  to  sots,  and  the  thousandfold  relief 
societies — though  I  confess  with  shame  that  I  sometimes  suc- 
cumb and  give  the  dollar,  yet  it  is  a  wicked  dollar,  which  by  and 
by  I  shall  have  the  manhood  to  withhold."  "Our  Sunday 
schools  and  churches  and  pauper  societies  are  yokes  to  the  neck. 
We  pain  ourselves  to  please  nobody.  There  are  natural  ways  of 
arriving  at  the  same  ends  at  which  these  ami,  but  do  not  arrive." 
"Nature  does  not  like  our  benevolence  or  our  learning  much 
better  than  she  likes  our  frauds  and  wars.  When  we  come  out 
of  the  caucus,  or  the  bank,  or  the  Abolition  convention,  or  the 
Temperance  meeting,  or  the  Transcendental  club,  into  the  fields 
and  woods,  she  says  to  us:  'So  hot,  my  little  sir?' ': 

Yes,  truly,  his  insight  is  admirable ;  his  truth  is  precious.  Yet 
the  secret  of  his  effect  is  not  even  in  these;  it  is  in  his  temper. 
It  is  in  the  hopeful,  serene  beautiful  temper  wherewith  these,  in 
Emerson,  are  indissolubly  joined;  in  which  they  work,  and  have 
then-  being.  He  says  himself :  "We  judge  of  a  man's  wisdom  by 
his  hope,  knowing  that  the  perception  of  the  inexhaustibleness  of 
nature  is  an  immortal  youth."  If  this  be  so,  how  wise  is  Emer- 
son !  for  never  had  man  such  a  sense  of  the  inexhaustibleness  of 
nature,  and  such  hope.  It  was  the  ground  of  his  being;  it  never 
failed  him.  Even  when  he  is  sadly  avowing  the  imperfection  of 
his  literary  power  and  resources,  lamenting  his  fumbling  fingers 
and  stammering  tongue,  he  adds:  "Yet,  as  I  tell  you,  I  am  very 
easy  in  my  mind  and  never  dream  of  suicide.  My  whole  philos- 
ophy which  is  very  real  teaches  acquiescence  and  optimism. 
Sure  I  am  that  the  right  word  will  be  spoken,  though  I  cut  out 
my  tongue."  In  his  old  age,  with  friends  dying  and  life  failing, 
his  note  of  cheerful,  forward-looking  hope  is  still  the  same.  "A 
multitude  of  young  men  are  growing  up  here  of  high  promise, 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  103 

and  I  compare  gladly  the  social  poverty  of  my  youth  with  the 
power  on  which  these  draw."  His  abiding  word  for  us,  the  word 
by  which  being  dead  he  yet  speaks  to  us,  is  this:  "That  which 
befits  us,  embosomed  hi  beauty  and  wonder  as  we  are,  is  cheer- 
fulness and  courage,  and  the  endeavor  to  realize  our  aspirations. 
Shall  not  the  heart,  which  has  received  so  much,  trust  the  Power 
by  which  it  lives?" 

One  can  scarcely  overrate  the  importance  of  thus  holding 
fast  to  happiness  and  hope.  It  gives  to  Emerson's  work  an  in- 
valuable virtue.  As  Wordsworth's  poetry  is,  in  my  judgment, 
the  most  important  work  done  in  verse,  in  our  language,  during 
the  present  century,  so  Emerson's  Essays  are,  I  think,  the  most 
important  work  done  in  prose.  His  work  is  more  jmpQitant  than 
Carlyle  S.  Let  us  be  just  to  Carlyle,  provoking  though  he  often 
is.  Not  only  has  he  that  genius  of  his  which  makes  Emerson  say 
truly  of  his  letters,  that  "they  savor  always  of  eternity."  More 
than  this  may  be  said  of  him.  The  scope  and  upshot  of  his 
teaching  are  true;  "his  guiding  genius,"  to  quote  Emerson 
again,  is  really  "his  moral  sense,  his  perception  of  the  sole  im- 
portance of  truth  and  justice."  But  consider  Carlyle's  temper, 
as  we  have  been  considering  Emerson's !  take  his  own  account  of 
it!  "Perhaps  London  is  the  proper  place  for  me  after  all,  seeing 
all  places  are  improper:  who  knows?  Meanwhile,  I  lead  a  most 
dyspeptic,  solitary,  self -shrouded  life;  consuming,  if  possible  in 
silence,  my  considerable  daily  allotment  of  pain;  glad  when  any 
strength  is  left  in  me  for  writing,  which  is  the  only  use  I  can  see 
in  myself — too  rare  a  case  of  late.  The  ground  of  my  existence 
is  black  as  death;  too  black,  when  all  void  too;  but  at  times  there 
paint  themselves  on  it  pictures  of  gold,  and  rainbow,  and  light- 
ning; all  the  brighter  for  the  black  ground,  I  suppose.  Withal, 
I  am  very  much  of  a  fool."  No,  not  a  fool,  but  turbid  and  mor- 
bid, willful  and  perverse.  "We  judge  of  a  man's  wisdom  by 
his  hope." 

Carlyle's  perverse  attitude  towards  happiness  cuts  him  off 
from  hope.  He  fiercely  attacks  the  desire  for  happiness;  his 
grand  point  in  Sartor,  his  secret  in  which  the  soul  may  find  rest, 
is  that  one  shall  cease  to  desire  happiness,  that  one  should  learn 


104  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

to  say  to  oneself:  "What  if  thou  wert  born  and  predestined  not 
to  be  happy,  but  to  be  unhappy !"  He  is  wrong;  Saint  Augustine 
is  the  better  philosopher,  who  says:  "Act  we  must  in  pursuance 
of  what  gives  us  most  delight."  Epictetus  and  Augustine  can 
be  severe  moralists  enough;  but  both  of  them  know  and  frankly 
say  that  the  desire  for  happiness  is  the  root  and  ground  of  man's 
being.  Tell  him  and  show  him  that  he  places  his  happiness 
wrong,  that  he  seeks  for  delight  where  delight  will  never  be 
really  found;  then  you  illumine  and  further  him.  But  you 
only  confuse  him  by  telling  him  to  cease  to  desire  happiness: 
and  you  will  not  tell  him  this  unless  you  are  already  confused 
yourself. 

Carlyle  preached  the  dignity  of  labor,  the  necessity  of  right- 
eousness, the  love  of  veracity,  the  hatred  of  shams.  He  is  said 
by  many  people  to  be  a  great  teacher,  a  great  helper  for  us,  be- 
cause he  does  so.  But  what  is  the  due  and  eternal  result  of  labor, 
righteousness,  veracity? — Happiness.  And  how  are  we  drawn 
to  them  by  one  who,  instead  of  making  us  feel  that  with  them  is 
happiness,  tells  us  that  perhaps  we  were  predestined  not  to  be 
happy  but  to  be  unhappy? 

You  will  find,  in  especial,  many  earnest  preachers  of  our 
popular  religion  to  be  fervent  in  their  praise  and  admiration  of 
Carlyle.  His  insistence  on  labor,  righteousness,  and  veracity, 
pleases  them;  his  contempt  for  happiness  pleases  them  too.  I 
read  the  other  day  a  tract  against  smoking,  although  I  do  not 
happen  to  be  a  smoker  myself.  "Smoking,"  said  the  tract,  "is 
liked  because  it  gives  agreeable  sensations.  Now  it  is  a  positive 
objection  to  a  thing  that  it  gives  agreeable  sensations.  An 
earnest  man  will  expressly  avoid  what  gives  agreeable  sensations." 
Shortly  afterwards  I  was  inspecting  a  school,  and  I  found  the 
children  reading  a  piece  of  poetry  on  the  common  theme  that 
were  are  here  today  and  gone  tomorrow.  I  shall  soon  be  gone, 
the  speaker  in  this  poem  was  made  to  say — 

"And  I  shall  be  glad  to  go, 
For  the  world  at  best  is  a  dreary  place, 
And  my  life  is  getting  low." 


PATTERNS  OF  AMERICANISM  105 

How  usual  a  language  of  popular  religion  that  is,  on  our  side  of 
the  Atlantic  at  any  rate !  But  then  our  popular  religion,  in  dis- 
paraging happiness  here  below,  knows  very  well  what  it  is  after. 
It  has  its  eye  on  a  happiness  in  a  future  life  above  the  clouds,  in 
the  New  Jerusalem,  to  be  won  by  disliking  and  rejecting 
happiness  here  on  earth.  And  so  long  as  this  ideal  stands  fast, 
it  is  very  well.  But  for  very  many  it  now  stands  fast  no  longer; 
for  Carlyle,  at  any  rate,  it  had  failed  and  vanished.  Happiness 
in  labor,  righteousness,  and  veracity — in  the  life  of  the  spirit — 
here  was  a  gospel  still  for  Carlyle  to  preach,  and  to  help  others 
by  preaching.  But  he  baffled  them  and  himself  by  preferring 
the  paradox  that  we  are  not  born  for  happiness  at  all. 

Happiness  in  labor,  righteousness,  and  veracity;  in  all  the 
life  of  the  spirit;  happiness  and  eternal  hope; — that  was  Emer- 
son's gospel.  I  hear  it  said  that  Emerson  was  too  sanguine;  that 
the  actual  generation  in  America  is  not  turning  out  so  well  as 
he  expected.  Very  likely  he  was  too  sanguine  as  to  the  near 
future;  in  this  country  it  is  difficult  not  to  be  too  sanguine.  Very 
possibly  the  present  generation  may  prove  unworthy  of  his 
high  hopes;  even  several  generations  succeeding  this  may  prove 
unworthy  of  them.  But  by  his  conviction  that  in  the  life  of  the 
spirit  is  happiness,  and  by  his  hope  that  this  life  of  the  spirit 
will  come  more  and  more  to  be  sanely  understood,  and  to  pre- 
vail, and  to  work  for  happiness — by  this  conviction  and  hope 
Emerson  was  great,  and  he  will  surely  prove  in  the  end  to  have 
been  right  in  them.  In  this  country  it  is  difficult,  as  I  said,  not 
to  be  sanguine.  Very  many  of  your  writers  are  over-sanguine, 
and  on  the  wrong  grounds.  But  you  have  two  men  who  in 
what  they  have  written  show  their  sanguineness  in  a  line  where 
courage  and  hope  are  just,  where  they  are  also  infinitely  im- 
portant, but  where  they  are  not  easy.  The  two  men  are  Franklin 
and  Emerson.1  These  two  are,  I  think,  the  most  distinctively 
and  honorably  American  of  your  writers;  they  are  the  most  orig- 
inal and  the  most  valuable.  Wise  men  everywhere  know  that 

ll  found  with  pleasure  that  this  conjunction  of  Emerson's  name  with 
Franklin's  had  already  occurred  to  an  accomplished  writer  and  a  delightful 
man,  a  friend  of  Emerson,  left  almost  the  sole  survivor,  alas !  of  the  famous 


106  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

we  must  keep  up  our  courage  and  hope;  they  know  that  hope  is, 
as  Wordsworth  well  says — 

"The  paramount  duty  which  heaven  lays, 
For  its  own  honor,  on  man's  suffering  heart." 

But  the  very  word  duty  points  to  an  effort  and  a  struggle  to 
maintain  our  hope  unbroken.  Franklin  and  Emerson  maintained 
theirs  with  a  convincing  ease,  an  inspiring  joy.  Franklin's  con- 
fidence hi  the  happiness  with  which  industry,  honesty,  and 
economy  will  crown  the  Life  of  this  work-day  world,  is  such  that 
he  runs  over  with  felicity.  With  a  like  felicity  does  Emerson  run 
over,  when  he  contemplates  the  happiness  eternally  attached  to 
the  true  Life  in  the  spirit.  You  cannot  prize  him  too  much,  nor 
heed  him  too  diligently.  He  has  lessons  for  both  the  branches 
of  our  race.  I  figure  him  to  my  mind  as  visible  upon  earth  still, 
as  still  standing  here  by  Boston  Bay,  or  at  his  own  Concord,  in 
his  habit  as  he  lived,  but  of  heightened  stature  and  shining  fea- 
ture, with  one  hand  stretched  out  toward  the  East,  to  our  laden 
and  laboring  England;  the  other  toward  the  ever-growing  West, 
to  his  own  dearly-loved  America, — "great,  intelligent,  sensual, 
avaricious  America."  To  us  he  shows  for  guidance  his  lucid 
freedom,  his  cheerfulness  and  hope;  to  you  his  dignity,  delicacy, 
serenity,  elevation. 

literary  generation  of  Boston — Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes.  Dr.  Holmes 
has  kindly  allowed  me  to  print  here  the  ingenious  and  interesting  lines, 
hitherto  unpublished,  in  which  he  speaks  of  Emerson  thus: 

"Where  in  the  realm  of  thought,  whose  air  is  song, 
Does  he,  the  Buddha  of  the  West,  belong? 
He  seems  a  winged  Franklin,  sweetly  wise, 
Born  to  unlock  the  secret  of  the  skies; 
And  which  the  nobler  calling — if  'tis  fair 
Terrestrial  with  celestial  to  compare — 
To  guide  the  storm-cloud's  elemental  Same, 
Or  walk  the  chambers  whence  the  lightning  came 
Amidst  the  sources  of  its  subtile  fire, 
And  steal  their  effluence  for  his  lips  and  lyre?" 

[Arnold's  Note.] 


LANDMARK   ADDRESSES   AND 
STATE   PAPERS 

DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE 

THOMAS  JEFFERSON 

[Thomas  Jefferson  (1743-1826),  the  third  President  of  the  United  States, 
was  born  in  Albemarle  County,  Virginia.  He  was  graduated  from  William 
and  Mary  College,  admitted  to  the  bar,  and  began  his  long  public  career  as 
a  member  of  the  Virginia  legislature.  He  was  a  delegate  to  the  Continental 
Congress,  and,  because  of  his  well-known  skill  in  composing  state  papers, 
was  appointed  upon  the  drafting  committee  of  the  Congress.  The  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  though  it  embodies  emendations  by  John  Adams  and 
Benjamin  Franklin,  is  mainly  the  work  of  Jefferson,  and  his  name  will  always 
be  indissolubly  connected  with  it.  Despite  the  fact  that  it  has  been  common 
to  sneer  at  certain  features  of  the  Declaration  (see  article  by  Moses  Coit 
Tyler,  "The  Declaration  of  Independence  in  the  Light  of  Modern  Criticism," 
reprinted  in  this  volume  on  page  158),  it  remains,  as  someone  has  said,  "the 
most  powerful,  the  most  significant  piece  of  literature  that  ever  came  from 
the  pen  of  a  statesman."  It  is  not  needful  to  enumerate  the  public  positions 
held  by  Jefferson  in  his  later  career.  After  retiring  from  the  Presidency  in 
1809,  he  spent  the  remainder  of  his  life  at  Monticello,  his  country  estate  in 
Virginia.] 

IN  CONGRESS,  JULY  4, 1776. 

THE  UNANIMOUS  DECLARATION  OF  THE  THIRTEEN  UNITED  STATES 
OF  AMERICA 

When,  in  the  course  of  human  events,  it  becomes  necessary 
for  one  people  to  dissolve  the  political  bands  which  have  con- 
nected them  with  another,  and  to  assume,  among  the  powers  of 
the  earth,  the  separate  and  equal  station  to  which  the  laws  of 
nature  and  of  nature's  God  entitle  them,  a  decent  respect  to  the 
opinions  of  mankind  requires  that  they  should  declare  the  causes 
which  impel  them  to  the  separation. 

107 


io8  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident:  that  all  men  are 
created  equal;  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  cer- 
tain unalienable  rights;  that  among  these  are  life,  liberty,  and 
the  pursuit  of  happiness.  That,  to  secure  these  rights,  govern- 
ments are  instituted  among  men,  deriving  their  just  powers 
from  the  consent  of  the  governed;  that,  whenever  any  form  of 
government  becomes  destructive  of  these  ends,  it  is  the  right  of 
the  people  to  alter  or  to  abolish  it,  and  to  institute  new  govern- 
ment, laying  its  foundation  on  such  principles,  and  organizing 
its  powers  in  such  form,  as  to  them  shall  seem  most  likely  to 
effect  their  safety  and  happiness.  Prudence,  indeed,  will  dictate 
that  governments  long  established  should  not  be  changed  for 
light  and  transient  causes;  and,  accordingly,  all  experience  hath 
shown  that  mankind  are  more  disposed  to  suffer,  while  evils 
are  sufferable,  than  to  right  themselves  by  abolishing  the  forms 
to  which  they  are  accustomed.  But,  when  a  long  train  of  abuses 
and  usurpations,  pursuing  invariably  the  same  object,  evinces  a 
design  to  reduce  them  under  absolute  despotism,  it  is  their  right, 
it  is  their  duty,  to  throw  off  such  government,  and  to  provide 
new  guards  for  their  future  security.  Such  has  been  the  patient 
sufference  of  these  colonies;  and  such  is  now  the  necessity  which 
constrains  them  to  alter  their  former  systems  of  government. 
The  history  of  the  present  king  of  Great  Britain  is  a  history  of 
repeated  injuries  and  usurpations,  all  having  in  direct  object  the 
establishment  of  an  absolute  tyranny  over  these  States.  To 
prove  this,  let  facts  be  submitted  to  a  candid  world: 

He  has  refused  his  assent  to  laws  the  most  wholesome  and 
necessary  for  the  public  good. 

He  has  forbidden  his  governors  to  pass  laws  of  immediate 
and  pressing  importance,  unless  suspended  in  their  operation  till 
his  assent  should  be  obtained;  and,  when  so  suspended,  he  has 
utterly  neglected  to  attend  to  them. 

He  has  refused  to  pass  other  laws  for  the  accommodation  of 
large  districts  of  people,  unless  those  people  would  relinquish  the 
right  of  representation  in  the  legislature,  a  right  inestimable  to 
them  and  formidable  to  tyrants  only. 

He  has  called  together  legislative  bodies  at  places  unusual, 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS         109 

uncomfortable,  and  distant  from  the  depository  of  their  public 
records,  for  the  sole  purpose  of  fatiguing  them  into  compliance 
with  his  measures. 

He  has  dissolved  representative  houses  repeatedly,  for  oppos- 
ing, with  manly  firmness,  his  invasions  on  the  rights  of  the  people. 

He  has  refused,  for  a  long  time  after  such  dissolutions,  to 
cause  others  to  be  elected;  whereby  the  legislative  powers,  in- 
capable of  annihilation,  have  returned  to  the  people  at  large  for 
their  exercise;  the  State  remaining,  in  the  mean  tune,  exposed 
to  all  the  dangers  of  invasion  from  without,  and  convulsions 
within. 

He  has  endeavored  to  prevent  the  population  of  these  States; 
for  that  purpose  obstructing  the  laws  for  naturalization  of  for- 
eigners; refusing  to  pass  others  to  encourage  their  migration 
hither,  and  raising  the  conditions  of  new  appropriations  of  lands. 

He  has  obstructed  the  administration  of  justice,  by  refusing 
his  assent  to  laws  for  establishing  judiciary  powers. 

He  has  made  judges  dependent  on  his  will  alone  for  the  ten- 
ure of  their  offices,  and  the  amount  and  payment  of  their  salaries. 

He  has  erected  a  multitude  of  new  offices  and  sent  hither 
swarms  of  officers  to  harass  our  people,  and  eat  out  their  sub- 
stance. 

He  has  kept  among  us  in  times  of  peace,  standing  armies, 
without  the  consent  of  our  legislature. 

He  has  affected  to  render  the  military  independent  of,  and 
superior  to,  the  civil  power. 

He  has  combined,  with  others,  to  subject  us  to  a  jurisdiction 
foreign  to  our  constitution,  and  unacknowledged  by  our  laws; 
giving  his  assent  to  their  acts  of  pretended  legislation: 

For  quartering  large  bodies  of  armed  troops  among  us: 

For  protecting  them,  by  a  mock  trial,  from  punishment  for 
any  murders  which  they  should  commit  on  the  inhabitants  of 
these  States: 

For  cutting  off  our  trade  with  all  parts  of  the  world: 

For  imposing  taxes  on  us  without  our  consent: 

For  depriving  us,  in  many  cases,  of  the  benefits  of  trial  by 
jury: 


no  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

For  transporting  us  beyond  seas  to  be  tried  for  pretended 
offenses: 

For  abolishing  the  free  system  of  English  laws  in  a  neighbor- 
ing province,  establishing  therein  an  arbitrary  government  and 
enlarging  its  boundaries,  so  as  to  render  it  at  once  an  example 
and  fit  instrument  for  introducing  the  same  absolute  rule  into 
these  colonies: 

For  taking  away  our  charters,  abolishing  our  most  valuable 
laws,  and  altering,  fundamentally,  the  forms  of  our  governments : 

For  suspending  our  own  legislatures,  and  declaring  themselves 
invested  with  power  to  legislate  for  us  in  all  cases  whatsoever. 

He  has  abdicated  government  here  by  declaring  us  out  of  his 
protection,  and  waging  war  against  us. 

He  has  plundered  our  seas,  ravaged  our  coasts,  burnt  our 
towns,  and  destroyed  the  lives  of  our  people. 

He  is,  at  this  time,  transporting  large  armies  of  foreign  mer- 
cenaries to  complete  the  works  of  death,  desolation,  and  tyr- 
anny, already  begun,  with  circumstances  of  cruelty  and  perfidy 
scarcely  paralleled  in  the  most  barbarous  ages,  and  totally 
unworthy  the  head  of  a  civilized  nation. 

He  has  constrained  our  fellow-citizens,  taken  captive  on  the 
high  seas,  to  bear  arms  against  their  country,  to  become  the 
executioners  of  their  friends  and  brethren,  or  to  fall  themselves 
by  their  hands. 

He  has  excited  domestic  insurrections  amongst  us,  and  has 
endeavored  to  bring  on  the  inhabitants  of  our  frontiers,  the 
merciless  Indian  savages,  whose  known  rule  of  warfare  is  an 
undistinguished  destruction  of  all  ages,  sexes,  and  conditions. 

In  every  stage  of  these  oppressions,  we  have  petitioned  for 
redress  in  the  most  humble  terms:  our  repeated  petitions  have 
been  answered  only  by  repeated  injury.  A  prince,  whose  char- 
acter is  thus  marked  by  every  act  which  may  define  a  tyrant, 
is  unfit  to  be  the  ruler  of  a  free  people. 

Nor  have  we  been  wanting  in  attention  to  our  British  breth- 
ren. We  have  warned  them,  from  time  to  tune,  of  attempts  by 
their  legislature  to  extend  an  unwarrantable  jurisdiction  over  us. 
We  have  reminded  them  of  the  circumstances  of  our  emigration 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS        in 

and  settlement  here.  We  have  appealed  to  their  native  justice 
and  magnanimity,  and  we  have  conjured  them,  by  the  ties  of 
our  common  kindred,  to  disavow  these  usurpations,  which  would 
inevitably  interrupt  our  connections  and  correspondence.  They, 
too,  have  been  deaf  to  the  voice  of  justice  and  consanguinity. 
We  must,  therefore,  acquiesce  in  the  necessity  which  denounces 
our  separation,  and  hold  them,  as  we  hold  the  rest  of  mankind, 
enemies  in  war — in  peace,  friends. 

We,  therefore,  the  representatives  of  the  United  States  of 
America,  in  General  Congress  assembled,  appealing  to  the  Su- 
preme Judge  of  the  world  for  the  rectitude  of  our  intentions,  do, 
in  the  name,  and  by  authority  of  the  good  people  of  these  col- 
onies, solemnly  publish  and  declare,  That  these  United  Colonies 
are,  and  of  right  ought  to  be,  free  and  independent  States;  that 
they  are  absolved  from  all  allegiance  to  the  British  crown,  and 
that  all  political  connection  between  them  and  the  state  of 
Great  Britain  is,  and  ought  to  be,  totally  dissolved;  and  that, 
as  free  and  independent  States,  they  have  full  power  to  levy  war, 
conclude  peace,  contract  alliances,  establish  commerce,  and  to 
do  all  other  acts  and  things  which  independent  States  may  of 
right  do.  And  for  the  support  of  this  declaration,  with  a  firm 
reliance  on  the  protection  of  Divine  Providence,  we  mutually 
pledge  to  each  other  our  lives,  our  fortunes,  and  our  sacred  honor. 

JOHN  HANCOCK. 


New  Hampshire 

Connecticut 

Fras.  Hopkinson, 

Josiah  Bartlett, 

Roger  Sherman, 

John  Hart, 

Win.  Whipple, 

Sam'el  Huntington, 

Abra.  Clark. 

Matthew  Thornton. 

Wm.  Williams, 

Oliver  Wolcott. 

Pennsylvania 

Massachusetts  Bay 

Robt.  Morris, 

Saml.  Adams, 
John  Adams, 
Robt.  Treat  Paine, 
Elbridge  Gerry. 

New  York 
Wm.  Floyd, 
Phil.  Livingston, 
Frans.  Lewis, 
Lewis  Morris. 

Benjamin  Rush, 
Benja.  Franklin, 
John  Morton, 
Geo.  Clymer, 
Jas.  Smith, 

Rhode  Island 

New  Jersey 

Geo.  Taylor, 
James  Wilson, 

Step.  Hopkins, 

Richd.  Stockton, 

Geo.  Ross. 

William  Ellery.  Jno.  Witherspoon, 


NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 


Delaware 
Caesar  Rodney, 
Geo.  Read, 
Tho.  M'Kean. 

Maryland 
Samuel  Chase, 
Wm.  Paca, 
Thos.  Stone, 
Charles  Carroll  of  Car- 
rollton. 


Virginia 
George  Wythe, 
Richard  Henry  Lee, 
Th  Jefferson, 
Benja.  Harrison, 
Thos.  Nelson,  jr., 
Francis  Lightfoot  Lee, 
Carter  Braxton. 

North  Carolina 
Wm.  Hooper, 
Joseph  Hewes, 
John  Perm. 


South  Carolina 
Edward  Rutledge, 
Thos.  Hey  ward,  Junr., 
Thomas  Lynch,  Junr., 
Arthur  Middleton. 

Georgia 

Button  Gwinnett, 
Lyman  Hall, 
Geo.  Walton. 


FAREWELL  ADDRESS 
GEORGE  WASHINGTON 

[George  Washington  (1732-1799),  the  first  President  of  the  United  States, 
was  born  in  Westmoreland  County,  Virginia,  and  died  at  Mount  Vernon,  his 
famous  estate,  not  many  miles  from  his  birthplace.  The  details  of  his  life 
are  so  well  known  that  no  attempt  is  made  in  this  note  to  recount  them. 
Light  on  his  character  as  an  American  citizen  will  be  found  in  the  selection, 
Van  Dyke's  The  Americanism]  of  Washington,  page  67,  this  volume.  After 
being  twice  elected  President  without  opposition,  Washington  felt  that 
he  had  done  his  work  in  founding  the  Republic  and  resolved  to  withdraw 
to  private  life.  His  Farewell  Address  was  written  upon  this  occasion  and 
issued  in  1796.  It  is  a  simple,  touching  letter  of  advice,  caution,  and  bene- 
diction, in  spite  of  the  stiff  and  formal  diction  in  which,  according  to  the 
literary  fashion  of  that  time,  it  is  couched.  As  has  been  long  known,  the 
Address  is  a  composite  production.  The  substance  and  spirit  of  it,  the  main 
idea  and  the  trend,  are  wholly  Washington's;  the  language,  in  great  part,  is 
undoubtedly  Madison's  and  Hamilton's  (see  Horace  Binney's  Inquiry  into 
the  Formation  of  Washington's  Farewell  Address;  also  a  briefer  account  in  the 
Forum,  vol.  xxvii,  p.  145).  In  reprinting  the  address  here  a  few  opening 
paragraphs  are  omitted.] 

In  looking  forward  to  the  moment,  which  is  intended  to  ter- 
minate the  career  of  my  public  life,  my  feelings  do  not  permit 
me  to  suspend  the  deep  acknowledgment  of  that  debt  of  grati- 
tude, which  I  owe  to  my  beloved  country  for  the  many  honors 
it  has  conferred  upon  me;  still  more  for  the  steadfast  confidence 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS        113 

with  which  it  has  supported  me;  and  for  the  opportunities  I 
have  thence  enjoyed  of  manifesting  my  inviolable  attachment,  by 
services  faithful  and  persevering,  though  in  usefulness  unequal 
to  my  zeal.  If  benefits  have  resulted  to  our  country  from  these 
services,  let  it  always  be  remembered  to  your  praise,  and  as  an 
instructive  example  in  our  annals,  that  under  circumstances  in 
which  the  passions,  agitated  in  every  direction,  were  liable  to 
mislead,  amidst  appearances  sometimes  dubious,  vicissitudes  of 
fortune  often  discouraging,  in  situations  in  which  not  unfre- 
quently  want  of  success  has  countenanced  the  spirit  of  criticism, 
the  constancy  of  your  support  was  the  essential  prop  of  the 
efforts,  and  a  guarantee  of  the  plans  by  which  they  were  affected. 
Profoundly  penetrated  with  this  idea,  I  shall  carry  it  with  me  to 
my  grave,  as  a  strong  incitement  to  unceasing  vows  that 
Heaven  may  continue  to  you  the  choicest  tokens  of  its  benefi- 
cence; that  your  union  and  brotherly  affection  may  be  per- 
petual, that  the  free  constitution,  which  is  the  work  of  your 
hands,  may  be  sacredly  maintained,  that  its  administration  in 
every  department  may  be  stamped  with  wisdom  and  virtue; 
that,  in  fine,  the  happiness  of  the  people  of  these  states,  under  the 
auspices  of  liberty,  may  be  made  complete,  by  so  careful  a  pres- 
ervation and  so  prudent  a  use  of  this  blessing,  as  will  acquire  to 
them  the  glory  of  recommending  it  to  the  applause,  the  affection, 
and  adoption  of  every  nation,  which  is  yet  a  stranger  to  it. 

Here,  perhaps,  I  ought  to  stop.  But  a  solicitude  for  your 
welfare,  which  cannot  end  but  with  my  life  and  the  apprehension 
of  danger,  natural  to  that  solicitude,  urge  me,  on  an  occasion 
like  the  present,  to  offer  to  your  solemn  contemplation,  and  to 
recommend  to  your  frequent  review,  some  sentiments,  which  are 
the  result  of  much  reflection,  of  no  inconsiderable  observation, 
and  which  appear  to  me  all-important  to  the  permanency  of 
your  felicity  as  a  people.  These  will  be  offered  to  you  with  the 
more  freedom,  as  you  can  only  see  in  them  the  disinterested 
warnings  of  a  parting  friend,  who  can  possibly  have  no  personal 
motive  to  bias  his  counsel.  Nor  can  I  forget,  as  an  encourage- 
ment to  it,  your  indulgent  reception  of  my  sentiments  on  a  for- 
mer and  not  dissimilar  occasion. 


H4  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

Interwoven  as  is  the  love  of  liberty  with  every  ligament  of 
your  hearts,  no  recommendation  of  mine  is  necessary  to  fortify 
or  confirm  the  attachment. 

The  unity  of  government,  which  constitutes  you  one  people, 
is  also  now  dear  to  you.  It  is  justly  so,  for  it  is  a  main  pillar  in 
the  edifice  of  your  real  independence,  the  support  of  your  tran- 
quility  at  home,  your  peace  abroad,  of  your  safety;  of  your 
prosperity;  of  that  very  liberty,  which  you  so  highly  prize. 
But  as  it  is  easy  to  foresee,  that,  from  different  causes  and  from 
different  quarters,  much  pains  will  be  taken,  many  artifices  em- 
ployed, to  weaken  hi  your  minds  the  conviction  of  this  truth;  as 
this  is  the  point  in  your  political  fortress  against  which  the 
batteries  of  internal  and  external  enemies  will  be  most  constantly 
and  actively  (though  often  covertly  and  insidiously)  directed, 
it  is  of  infinite  moment  that  you  should  properly  estimate  the 
immense  value  of  your  national  union  to  your  collective  and 
individual  happiness;  that  you  should  cherish  a  cordial,  habitual, 
and  immovable  attachment  to  it;  accustoming  yourselves  to 
think  and  speak  of  it  as  of  the  palladium  of  your  political  safety 
and  prosperity;  watching  for  its  preservation  with  jealous 
anxiety;  discountenancing  whatever  may  suggest  even  a  sus- 
picion, that  it  can  in  any  event  be  abandoned;  and  indignantly 
frowning  upon  the  first  dawning  of  every  attempt  to  alienate 
any  portion  of  our  country  from  the  rest,  or  to  enfeeble  the 
sacred  ties  which  now  link  together  the  various  parts. 

For  this  you  have  every  inducement  of  sympathy  and  interest. 
Citizens,  by  birth  or  choice,  of  a  common  country,  that  country 
has  a  right  to  concentrate  your  affections.  The  name  of  American, 
which  belongs  to  you,  in  your  national  capacity,  must  always 
exalt  the  just  pride  of  patriotism,  more  than  any  appellation 
derived  from  local  discriminations.  With  slight  shades  of  dif- 
ference, you  have  the  same  religion,  manners,  habits,  and 
political  principles.  You  have  in  a  common  cause  fought  and 
triumphed  together;  the  independence  and  liberty  you  possess 
are  the  work  of  joint  counsels,  and  joint  efforts,  of  common 
dangers,  sufferings,  and  successes. 

But  these  considerations,  however  powerfully  they  address 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS         115 

themselves  to  your  sensibility,  are  greatly  outweighed  by  those 
which  apply  more  immediately  to  your  interest.  Here  every 
portion  of  our  country  finds  the  most  commanding  motives  for 
carefully  guarding  and  preserving  the  union  of  the  whole. 

The  North,  in  an  unrestrained  intercourse  with  the  South, 
protected  by  the  equal  laws  of  a  common  government,  finds  in 
the  productions  of  the  latter,  great  additional  resources  of  mari- 
time and  commercial  enterprise  and  precious  materials  of  manu- 
facturing industry.  The  South,  in  the  same  intercourse,  benefit- 
ing by  the  agency  of  the  North,  sees  its  agriculture  grow  and  its 
commerce  expand.  Turning  partly  into  its  own  channels  the  sea- 
men of  the  North,  it  finds  its  particular  navigation  invigorated; 
and,  while  it  contributes,  in  different  ways,  to  nourish  and  in- 
crease the  general  mass  of  the  national  navigation,  it  looks  for- 
ward to  the  protection  of  a  maritime  strength,  to  which  itself  is 
unequally  adapted.  The  East,  in  a  like  intercourse  with  the 
West,  already  finds,  and  in  the  progressive  improvement  of 
interior  communications  by  land  and  water,  will  more  and  more 
find,  a  valuable  vent  for  the  commodities  which  it  brings  from 
abroad,  or  manufactures  at  home.  The  West  derives  from  the 
East  supplies  requisite  to  its  growth  and  comfort,  and,  what  is 
perhaps  of  still  greater  consequence,  it  must  of  necessity  owe  the 
secure  enjoyment  of  indispensable  outlets  for  its  own  productions 
to  the  weight,  influence,  and  the  future  maritime  strength  of  the 
Atlantic  side  of  the  Union,  directed  by  an  indissoluble  community 
of  interest  as  one  nation.  Any  other  tenure  by  which  the  West 
can  hold  this  essential  advantage,  whether  derived  from  its 
own  separate  strength,  or  from  an  apostate  and  unnatural  con- 
nexion with  any  foreign  power,  must  be  intrinsically  precarious. 

While,  then,  every  part  of  our  country  thus  feels  an  immediate 
and  particular  interest  in  union,  all  the  parts  combined  cannot 
fail  to  find  in  the  united  mass  of  means  and  efforts  greater 
strength,  greater  resource,  proportionably  greater  security  from 
external  danger,  a  less  frequent  interruption  of  their  peace  by 
foreign  nations;  and,  what  is  of  inestimable  value,  they  must 
derive  from  union  an  exemption  from  those  broils  and  wars 
between  themselves,  which  so  frequently  afflict  neighboring 


n6  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

countries  not  tied  together  by  the  same  governments,  which 
their  own  rivalships  alone  would  be  sufficient  to  produce,  but 
which  opposite  foreign  alliances,  attachments,  and  intrigues  would 
stimulate  and  embitter.  Hence,  likewise,  they  will  avoid  the 
necessity  of  those  overgrown  military  establishments,  which, 
under  any  form  of  government,  are  inauspicious  to  liberty,  and 
which  are  to  be  regarded  as  particularly  hostile  to  republican 
liberty.  In  this  sense  it  is,  that  your  union  ought  to  be  considered 
as  a  main  prop  of  your  liberty,  and  that  the  love  of  the  one  ought 
to  endear  to  you  the  preservation  of  the  other. 

These  considerations  speak  a  persuasive  language  to  every 
reflecting  and  virtuous  mind,  and  exhibit  the  continuance  of  the 
Union  as  a  primary  object  of  patriotic  desire.  Is  there  a  doubt 
whether  a  common  government  can  embrace  so  large  a  sphere? 
Let  experience  solve  it.  To  listen  to  mere  speculation  hi  such  a 
case  were  criminal.  We  are  authorized  to  hope,  that  a  proper 
organization  of  the  whole,  with  the  auxiliary  agency  of  govern- 
ments for  the  respective  subdivisions,  will  afford  a  happy  issue 
to  the  experiment.  It  is  well  worth  a  fair  and  full  experiment. 
With  such  powerful  and  obvious  motives  to  union,  affecting  ah1 
parts  of  our  country,  while  experience  shall  not  have  demon- 
strated its  impracticability,  there  will  always  be  reason  to  dis- 
trust the  patriotism  of  those,  who  in  any  quarter  may  endeavor 
to  weaken  its  bands. 

In  contemplating  the  causes  which  may  disturb  our  Union, 
it  occurs  as  matter  of  serious  concern,  that  any  ground  should 
have  been  furnished  for  characterizing  parties  by  geographical 
discriminations,  northern  and  southern,  Atlantic  and  western; 
whence  designing  men  may  endeavor  to  excite  a  belief  that  there 
is  a  real  difference  of  local  interests  and  views.  One  of  the  expe- 
dients of  party  to  acquire  influence,  within  particular  districts, 
is  to  misrepresent  the  opinions  and  aims  of  other  districts.  You 
cannot  shield  yourselves  too  much  against  the  jealousies  and 
heart-burnings,  which  spring  from  these  misrepresentations; 
they  tend  to  render  alien  to  each  other  those,  who  ought  to  be 
bound  together  by  fraternal  affection.  The  inhabitants  of  our 
western  country  have  lately  had  a  useful  lesson  on  this  head; 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS        117 

they  have  seen,  in  the  negotiation  by  the  Executive,  and  in  the 
unanimous  ratification  by  the  Senate,  of  the  treaty  with  Spain, 
and  in  the  universal  satisfaction  at  that  event,  throughout  the 
United  States,  a  decisive  proof  how  unfounded  were  the  sus- 
picions propagated  among  them  of  a  policy  in  the  General  Gov- 
ernment and  in  the  Atlantic  States  unfriendly  to  their  interests 
in  regard  to  the  Mississippi;  they  have  been  witnesses  to  the  for- 
mation of  two  treaties,  that  with  Great  Britain,  and  that  with 
Spain,  which  secure  to  them  every  thing  they  could  desire,  in 
respect  to  our  foreign  relations,  towards  confirming  their  pros- 
perity. Will  it  not  be  their  wisdom  to  rely  for  the  preservation 
of  these  advantages  on  the  Union  by  which  they  were  procured? 
Will  they  not  henceforth  be  deaf  to  those  advisers,  if  such  there 
are,  who  would  sever  them  from  their  brethren  and  connect 
them  with  aliens? 

To  the  efficacy  and  permanency  of  your  Union,  a  Govern- 
ment for  the  whole  is  indispensable.  No  alliances,  however 
strict,  between  the  parts  can  be  an  adequate  substitute;  they 
must  inevitably  experience  the  infractions  and  interruptions, 
which  all  alliances  in  all  times  have  experienced.  Sensible  of  this 
momentous  truth,  you  have  improved  upon  your  first  essay,  by 
the  adoption  of  a  Constitution  of  Government  better  calculated 
than  your  former  for  an  intimate  Union,  and  for  the  efficacious 
management  of  your  common  concerns.  This  Government,  the 
offspring  of  our  own  choice,  uninfluenced  and  unawed,  adopted 
upon  full  investigation  and  mature  deliberation,  completely  free 
in  its  principles,  in  the  distribution  of  its  powers,  uniting  security 
with  energy,  and  containing  within  itself  a  provision  for  its  own 
amendment,  has  a  just  claim  to  your  confidence  and  your  sup- 
port. Respect  for  its  authority,  compliance  with  its  laws,  acqui- 
escence in  its  measures,  are  duties  enjoined  by  the  fundamental 
maxims  of  true  Liberty. '  The  basis  of  our  political  systems  is  the 
right  of  the  people  to  make  and  to  alter  their  constitutions  of 
government.  But  the  constitution  which  at  any  time  exists,  till 
changed  by  an  explicit  and  authentic  act  of  the  whole  people, 
is  sacredly  obligatory  upon  all.  The  very  idea  of  the  power 
and  the  right  of  the  people  to  establish  Government  presup- 


n8  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

poses  the  duty  of  every  individual  to  obey  the  established 
Government. 

All  obstructions  to  the  execution  of  the  laws,  all  combinations 
and  associations,  under  whatever  plausible  character,  with  the 
real  design  to  direct,  control,  counteract,  or  awe  the  regular 
deliberation  and  action  of  the  constituted  authorities,  are  de- 
structive of  this  fundamental  principle,  and  of  fatal  tendency. 
They  serve  to  organize  faction,  to  give  it  an  artificial  and  extra- 
ordinary force;  to  put,  hi  the  place  of  the  delegated  will  of  the 
nation,  the  will  of  a  party,  often  a  small  but  artful  and  enter- 
prising minority  of  the  community;  and,  according  to  the  alter- 
nate triumphs  of  different  parties,  to  make  the  public  adminis- 
tration the  mirror  of  the  ill-concerted  and  incongruous  projects 
of  faction,  rather  than  the  organ  of  consistent  and  wholesome 
plans  digested  by  common  counsels,  and  modified  by  mutual 
interests. 

However  combinations  or  associations  of  the  above  descrip- 
tion may  now  and  then  answer  popular  ends,  they  are  likely,  in 
the  course  of  tune  and  things,  to  become  potent  engines,  by 
which  cunning,  ambitious,  and  unprincipled  men  will  be  enabled 
to  subvert  the  power  of  the  people,  and  to  usurp  for  themselves 
the  reins  of  government;  destroying  afterwards  the  very  engines 
which  have  lifted  them  to  unjust  dominion. 

Towards  the  preservation  of  your  government,  and  the  per- 
manency of  your  present  happy  state,  it  is  requisite,  not  only 
that  you  steadily  discountenance  irregular  oppositions  to  its 
acknowledged  authority,  but  also  that  you  resist  with  care  the 
spirit  of  innovation  upon  its  principles,  however  specious  the 
pretexts.  One  method  of  assault  may  be  to  effect,  in  the  forms 
of  the  constitution,  alterations,  which  will  impair  the  energy  of 
the  system,  and  thus  to  undermine  what  cannot  be  directly 
overthrown.  In  all  the  changes  to  which  you  may  be  invited, 
remember  that  tune  and  habit  are  at  least  as  necessary  to  fix  the 
true  character  of  governments,  as  of  other  human  institutions; 
that  experience  is  the  surest  standard,  by  which  to  test  the  real 
tendency  of  the  existing  constitution  of  a  country;  that  facility 
in  changes,  upon  the  credit  of  mere  hypothesis  and  opinion,  ex- 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS        119 

poses  to  perpetual  change,  from  the  endless  variety  of  hypothesis 
and  opinion;  and  remember,  especially,  that,  for  the  efficient 
management  of  your  common  interests,  in  a  country  so  extensive 
as  ours,  a  government  of  as  much  vigor  as  is  consistent  with  the 
perfect  security  of  liberty  is  indispensable.  Liberty  itself  will 
find  in  such  a  government,  with  powers  properly  distributed  and 
adjusted,  its  surest  guardian.  It  is,  indeed,  little  else  than  a 
name,  where  the  government  is  too  feeble  to  withstand  the 
enterprises  of  faction,  to  confine  each  member  of  the  society 
within  the  limits  prescribed  by  the  laws,  and  to  maintain  all  in 
the  secure  and  tranquil  enjoyment  of  the  rights  of  person  and 
property. 

I  have  already  intimated  to  you  the  danger  of  parties  in  the 
state,  with  particular  reference  to  the  founding  of  them  on 
geographical  discriminations.  Let  me  now  take  a  more  compre- 
hensive view,  and  warn  you  in  the  most  solemn  manner  against 
the  baneful  effects  of  the  spirit  of  party,  generally. 

This  spirit,  unfortunately,  is  inseparable  from  our  nature, 
having  its  root  in  the  strongest  passions  of  the  human  mind. 
It  exists  under  different  shapes  in  all  governments,  more  or  less 
stifled,  controlled,  or  repressed;  but,  in  those  of  the  popular 
form,  it  is  seen  in  its  greatest  rankness,  and  is  truly  their  worst 
enemy. 

The  alternate  domination  of  one  faction  over  another,  sharp- 
ened by  the  spirit  of  revenge,  natural  to  party  dissension,  which 
in  different  ages  and  countries  has  perpetrated  the  most  horrid 
enormities,  is  itself  a  frightful  despotism.  But  this  leads  at 
length  to  a  more  formal  and  permanent  despotism.  The  dis- 
orders and  miseries,  which  result,  gradually  incline  the  minds 
of  men  to  seek  security  and  repose  in  the  absolute  power  of  an 
individual;  and  sooner  or  later  the  chief  of  some  prevailing  fac- 
tion, more  able  or  more  fortunate  than  his  competitors,  turns 
this  disposition  to  the  purposes  of  his  own  elevation,  on  the 
ruins  of  public  liberty. 

Without  looking  forward  to  an  extremity  of  this  kind  (which 
nevertheless  ought  not  to  be  entirely  out  of  sight),  the  common 
and  continual  mischiefs  of  the  spirit  of  party  are  sufficient  to 


lao  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

make  it  the  interest  and  duty  of  a  wise  people  to  discourage  and 
restrain  it. 

It  serves  always  to  distract  the  public  councils,  and  enfeeble 
the  public  administration.  It  agitates  the  community  with  ill- 
founded  jealousies  and  false  alarms;  kindles  the  animosity  of 
one  part  against  another,  foments  occasionally  riot  and  insur- 
rection. It  opens  the  door  to  foreign  influence  and  corruption, 
which  find  a  facilitated  access  to  the  government  itself  through 
the  channels  of  party  passions.  Thus  the  policy  and  the  will  of 
one  country  are  subjected  to  the  policy  and  will  of  another. 

There  is  an  opinion,  that  parties  in  free  countries  are  useful 
checks  upon  the  administration  of  the  government,  and  serve  to 
keep  alive  the  spirit  of  liberty.  This  within  certain  limits  is  prob- 
ably true;  and  in  governments  of  a  monarchical  cast,  patriot- 
ism may  look  with  indulgence,  if  not  with  favor,  upon  the  spirit 
of  party.  But  in  those  of  the  popular  character,  in  governments 
purely  elective,  it  is  a  spirit  not  to  be  encouraged.  From  their 
natural  tendency,  it  is  certain  there  will  always  be  enough  of 
that  spirit  for  every  salutary  purpose.  And,  there  being  constant 
danger  of  excess,  the  effort  ought  to  be,  by  force  of  public  opin- 
ion, to  mitigate  and  assuage  it.  A  fire  not  to  be  quenched,  it 
demands  a  uniform  vigilance  to  prevent  its  bursting  into  a 
flame,  lest,  instead  of  warming,  it  should  consume. 

It  is  important,  likewise,  that  the  habits  of  thinking  in  a 
free  country  should  inspire  caution,  in  those  intrusted  with  its 
administration,  to  confine  themselves  within  their  respective 
constitutional  spheres,  avoiding  hi  the  exercise  of  the  powers  of 
one  department  to  encroach  upon  another.  The  spirit  of  en- 
croachment tends  to  consolidate  the  powers  of  all  the  depart- 
ments in  one,  and  thus  to  create,  whatever  the  form  of  govern- 
ment, a  real  depotism.  A  just  estimate  of  that  love  of  power, 
and  proneness  to  abuse  it,  which  predominates  in  the  human 
heart,  is  sufficient  to  satisfy  us  of  the  truth  of  this  position.  The 
necessity  of  reciprocal  checks  in  the  exercise  of  political  power, 
by  dividing  and  distributing  it  into  different  depositories,  and 
constituting  each  the  guardian  of  the  public  weal  against  inva- 
sions by  the  others,  has  been  evinced  by  experiments  ancient 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS        121 

and  modern ;  some  of  them  in  our  country  and  under  our  own  eyes. 
To  preserve  them  must  be  as  necessary  as  to  institute  them. 
If,  in  the  opinion  of  the  people,  the  distribution  or  modification 
of  the  constitutional  powers  be  in  any  particular  wrong,  let  it 
be  corrected  by  an  amendment  in  the  way  which  the  constitution 
designates.  But  let  there  be  no  change  by  usurpation;  for, 
though  this,  in  one  instance,  may  be  the  instrument  of  good,  it 
is  the  customary  weapon  by  which  free  governments  are  de- 
stroyed. The  precedent  must  always  greatly  overbalance  in 
permanent  evil  any  partial  or  transient  benefit,  which  the  use 
can  at  any  tune  yield. 

Of  all  the  dispositions  and  habits,  which  lead  to  political 
prosperity,  religion  and  morality  are  indispensable  supports. 
In  vain  would  that  man  claim  the  tribute  of  patriotism,  who 
should  labor  to  subvert  these  great  pillars  of  human  happiness, 
these  firmest  props  of  the  duties  of  men  and  citizens.  The  mere 
politician,  equally  with  the  pious  man,  ought  to  respect  and 
cherish  them.  A  volume  could  not  trace  all  their  connexions 
with  private  and  public  felicity.  Let  it  simply  be  asked,  Where 
is  the  security  for  property,  for  reputation,  for  life,  if  the  sense 
of  religious  obligation  desert  the  oaths,  which  are  the  instru- 
ments of  investigation  in  courts  of  justice?  And  let  us  with 
caution  indulge  the  supposition,  that  morality  can  be  main- 
tained without  religion.  Whatever  may  be  conceded  to  the  in- 
fluence of  refined  education  on  minds  of  peculiar  structure, 
reason  and  experience  both  forbid  us  to  expect,  that  national 
morality  can  prevail  in  exclusion  of  religious  principle. 

It  is  substantially  true,  that  virtue  or  morality  is  a  necessary 
spring  of  popular  government.  The  rule,  indeed,  extends  with 
more  or  less  force  to  every  species  of  free  government.  Who, 
that  is  a  sincere  friend  to  it,  can  look  with  indifference  upon 
attempts  to  shake  the  foundation  of  the  fabric? 

Promote,  then,  as  an  object  of  primary  importance,  institu- 
tions for  the  general  diffusion  of  knowledge.  In  proportion  as 
the  structure  of  a  government  gives  force  to  public  opinion,  it 
is  essential  that  public  opinion  should  be  enlightened. 

As  a  very  important  source  of  strength  and  security,  cherish 


122  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

public  credit.  One  method  of  preserving  it  is,  to  use  it  as  spar- 
ingly as  possible;  avoiding  occasions  of  expense  by  cultivating 
peace,  but  remembering  also  that  timely  disbursements  to  pre- 
pare for  danger  frequently  prevent  much  greater  disbursements 
to  repel  it;  avoiding  likewise  the  accumulation  of  debt,  not  only 
by  shunning  occasions  of  expense,  but  by  vigorous  exertion  in 
time  of  peace  to  discharge  the  debts,  which  unavoidable  wars 
may  have  occasioned,  not  ungenerously  throwing  upon  posterity 
the  burden  which  we  ourselves  ought  to  bear.  The  execution  of 
these  maxims  belongs  to  your  representatives,  but  it  is  necessary 
that  public  opinion  should  cooperate.  To  facilitate  to  them  the 
performance  of  their  duty,  it  is  essential  that  you  should  prac- 
tically bear  in  mind,  that  towards  the  payment  of  debts  there 
must  be  revenue;  that  to  have  revenue  there  must  be  taxes; 
that  no  taxes  can  be  devised  which  are  not  more  or  less  incon- 
venient and  unpleasant ;  that  the  intrinsic  embarrassment,  insepar- 
able from  the  selection  of  the  proper  objects  (which  is  always  a 
choice  of  difficulties),  ought  to  be  a  decisive  motive  for  a  candid 
construction  of  the  conduct  of  the  government  in  making  it, 
and  for  a  spirit  of  acquiescence  in  the  measures  for  obtaining 
revenue,  which  the  public  exigencies  may  at  any  time  dictate. 

Observe  good  faith  and  justice  towards  all  nations;  cultivate 
peace  and  harmony  with  all.  Religion  and  morality  enjoin  this 
conduct;  and  can  it  be,  that  good  policy  does  not  equally  enjoin 
it?  It  will  be  worthy  of  a  free,  enlightened,  and  at  no  distant 
period,  a  great  nation,  to  give  to  mankind  the  magnanimous  and 
too  novel  example  of  a  people  always  guided  by  an  exalted  jus- 
tice and  benevolence.  Who  can  doubt,  that  in  the  course  of 
time  and  things,  the  fruits  of  such  a  plan  would  richly  repay  any 
temporary  advantages  which  might  be  lost  by  a  steady  adher- 
ence to  it?  Can  it  be  that  Providence  has  not  connected  the 
permanent  felicity  of  a  nation  with  its  virtue?  The  experiment, 
at  least,  is  recommended  by  every  sentiment  which  ennobles 
human  nature.  Alas !  is  it  rendered  impossible  by  its  vices? 

In  the  execution  of  such  a  plan,  nothing  is  more  essential, 
than  that  permanent,  inveterate  antipathies  against  particular 
nations,  and  passionate  attachments  for  others,  should  be  ex- 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS        123 

eluded;  and  that,  in  place  of  them,  just  and  amicable  feelings 
towards  all  should  be  cultivated.  The  nation,  which  indulges 
towards  another  an  habitual  hatred,  or  an  habitual  fondness,  is 
in  some  degree'  a  slave.  It  is  a  slave  to  its  animosity  or  to  its 
affection,  either  of  which  is  sufficient  to  lead  it  astray  from  its 
duty  and  its  interest.  Antipathy  in  one  nation  against  another 
disposes  each  more  readily  to  offer  insult  and  injury,  to  lay  hold 
of  slight  causes  of  umbrage,  and  to  be  haughty  and  intractable, 
when  accidental  or  trifling  occasions  of  dispute  occur.  Hence, 
frequent  collisions,  obstinate,  envenomed,  and  bloody  contests. 
The  nation,  prompted  by  ill-will  and  resentment,  sometimes 
impels  to  war  the  Government,  contrary  to  the  best  calculations 
of  policy.  The  Government  sometimes  participates  in  the 
national  propensity,  and  adopts  through  passion  what  reason 
would  reject;  at  other  times,  it  makes  the  animosity  of  the  nation 
subservient  to  projects  of  hostility  instigated  by  pride,  ambition, 
and  other  sinister  and  pernicious  motives.  The  peace  often, 
sometimes  perhaps  the  liberty,  of  nations  has  been  the  victim. 
So  likewise,  a  passionate  attachment  of  one  nation  for  another 
produces  a  variety  of  evils.  Sympathy  for  the  favorite  nation, 
facilitating  the  illusion  of  an  imaginary  common  interest  in 
cases  where  no  real  common  interest  exists,  and  infusing  into 
one  the  enmities  of  the  other,  betrays  the  former  into  a  partici- 
pation in  the  quarrels  and  wars  of  the  latter,  without  adequate 
inducement  or  justification.  It  leads  also  to  concessions  to  the 
favorite  nation  of  privileges  denied  to  others,  which  is  apt 
doubly  to  injure  the  nation  making  the  concessions;  by  un- 
necessarily parting  with  what  ought  to  have  been  retained;  and 
by  exciting  jealousy,  ill-will,  and  a  disposition  to  retaliate,  in  the 
parties  from  whom  equal  privileges  are  withheld.  And  it  gives 
to  ambitious,  corrupted,  or  deluded  citizens  (who  devote  them- 
selves to  the  favorite  nation),  facility  to  betray  or  sacrifice  the 
interests  of  their  own  country,  without  odium,  sometimes  even 
with  popularity;  gilding,  with  the  appearances  of  a  virtuous  sense 
of  obligation;  a  commendable  deference  for  public  opinion,  or  a 
laudable  zeal  for  public  good,  the  base  or  foolish  compliances  of 
ambition,  corruption  or  infatuation. 


i24  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

As  avenues  to  foreign  influence  in  innumberable  ways,  such 
attachments  are  particularly  alarming  to  the  truly  enlightened 
and  independent  patriot.  How  many  opportunities  do  they 
afford  to  tamper  with  domestic  factions,  to  practice  the  arts  of 
seduction,  to  mislead  public  opinion,  to  influence  or  awe  the 
public  councils!  Such  an  attachment  of  a  small  or  weak,  to- 
wards a  great  and  powerful  nation,  dooms  the  former  to  be  the 
satellite  of  the  latter. 

Against  the  insidious  wiles  of  foreign  influence  (I  conjure 
you  to  believe  me,  fellow-citizens),  the  jealousy  of  a  free  people 
ought  to  be  constantly  awake,  since  history  and  experience  prove 
that  foreign  influence  is  one  of  the  most  baneful  foes  of  repub- 
lican government.  But  that  jealousy,  to  be  useful,  must  be  im- 
partial; else  it  becomes  the  instrument  of  the  very  influence  to 
be  avoided,  instead  of  a  defence  against  it.  Excessive  partiality 
for  one  foreign  nation,  and  excessive  dislike  of  another,  cause 
those  whom  they  actuate  to  see  danger  only  on  one  side,  and 
serve  to  veil  and  even  second  the  arts  of  influence  on  the  other. 
Real  patriots  who  may  resist  the  intrigues  of  the  favorite,  are 
liable  to  become  suspected  and  odious;  while  its  tools  and  dupes 
usurp  the  applause  and  confidence  of  the  people,  to  surrender 
their  interests. 

The  great  rule  of  conduct  for  us,  in  regard  to  foreign  nations, 
is,  in  extending  our  commercial  relations,  to  have  with  them  as 
little  political  connexion  as  possible.  So  far  as  we  have  already 
formed  engagements,  let  them  be  f ulfilled  with  perfect  good  faith. 
Here  let  us  stop. 

Europe  has  a  set  of  primary  interests,  which  to  us  have 
none,  or  a  very  remote  relation.  Hence  she  must  be  engaged  in 
frequent  controversies,  the  causes  of  which  are  essentially  for- 
eign to  our  concerns.  Hence,  therefore,  it  must  be  unwise  in  us 
to  implicate  ourselves,  by  artificial  ties,  hi  the  ordinary  vicissi- 
tudes of  her  politics,  or  the  ordinary  combinations  and  collisions 
of  her  friendships  or  enmities. 

Our  detached  and  distant  situation  invites  and  enables  us  to 
pursue  a  different  course.  If  we  remain  one  people,  under  an 
efficient  government,  the  period  is  not  far  off  when  we  may  defy 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS        125 

material  injury  from  external  annoyance;  when  we  may  take 
such  an  attitude  as  will  cause  the  neutrality,  we  may  at  any 
time  resolve  upon,  to  be  scrupulously  respected;  when  belliger- 
ent nations,  under  the  impossibility  of  making  acquisitions  upon 
us,  will  not  lightly  hazard  the  giving  us  provocation;  when  we 
may  choose  peace  or  war,  as  our  interest,  guided  by  justice, 
shall  counsel. 

Why  forego  the  advantages  of  so  peculiar  a  situation?  Why 
quit  our  own  to  stand  upon  foreign  ground?  Why,  by  inter- 
weaving our  destiny  with  that  of  any  part  of  Europe,  entangle 
our  peace  and  prosperity  in  the  toils  of  European  ambition, 
rivalship,  interest,  humor  or  caprice? 

It  is  our  true  policy  to  steer  clear  of  permanent  alliances  with 
any  portion  of  the  foreign  world;  so  far,  I  mean,  as  we  are  now 
at  liberty  to  do  it;  for  let  me  not  be  understood  as  capable  of 
patronizing  infidelity  to  existing  engagements.  I  hold  the  maxim 
no  less  applicable  to  public  than  to  private  affairs,  that  honesty 
is  always  the  best  policy.  I  repeat  it,  therefore,  let  those  engage- 
ments be  observed  in  their  genuine  sense.  But,  in  my  opinion, 
it  is  unnecessary  and  would  be  unwise  to  extend  them. 

Taking  care  always  to  keep  ourselves,  by  suitable  establish- 
ments, on  a  respectable  defensive  posture,  we  may  safely  trust 
to  temporary  alliances  for  extraordinary  emergencies. 

Harmony,  liberal  intercourse  with  all  nations,  are  recom- 
mended by  policy,  humanity,  and  interest.  But  even  our  com- 
mercial policy  should  hold  an  equal  and  impartial  hand;  neither 
seeking  nor  granting  exclusive  favors  or  preferences;  consulting 
the  natural  course  of  things;  diffusing  and  diversifying  by  gentle 
means  the  streams  of  commerce,  but  forcing  nothing;  establish- 
ing, with  powers  so  disposed,  in  order  to  give  trade  a  stable 
course,  to  define  the  rights  of  our  merchants,  and  to  enable  the 
government  to  support  them,  conventional  rules  of  intercourse, 
the  best  that  present  circumstances  and  mutual  opinion  will 
permit,  but  temporary,  and  liable  to  be  from  time  to  time  aban- 
doned or  varied,  as  experience  and  circumstances  shall  dictate; 
constantly  keeping  in  view,  that  it  is  folly  in  one  nation  to  look 
for  disinterested  favors  from  another;  that  it  must  pay  with  a 


126  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

portion  of  its  independence  for  whatever  it  may  accept  under 
that  character;  that,  by  such  acceptance,  it  may  place  itself  in 
the  condition  of  having  given  equivalents  for  nominal  favors, 
and  yet  of  being  reproached  with  ingratitude  for  not  giving  more. 
There  can  be  no  greater  error  than  to  expect  or  calculate  upon 
real  favors  from  nation  to  nation.  It  is  an  illusion,  which  experi- 
ence must  cure,  which  a  just  pride  ought  to  discard. 

In  offering  to  you,  my  countrymen,  these  counsels  of  an  old 
and  affectionate  friend,  I  dare  not  hope  they  will  make  the 
strong  and  lasting  impression  I  could  wish;  that  they  will  control 
the  usual  current  of  the  passions,  or  prevent  our  nation  from 
running  the  course,  which  has  hitherto  marked  the  destiny  of 
nations.  But,  if  I  may  even  flatter  myself,  that  they  may  be 
productive  of  some  partial  benefit,  some  occasional  good;  that 
they  may  now  and  then  recur  to  moderate  the  fury  of  party 
spirit,  to  warn  against  the  mischiefs  of  foreign  intrigue,  to  guard 
against  the  impostures  of  pretended  patriotism;  this  hope  will 
be  a  full  recompense  for  the  solicitude  for  your  welfare,  by  which 
they  have  been  dictated. 

How  far  in  the  discharge  of  my  official  duties  I  have  been 
guided  by  the  principles  which  have  been  delineated,  the  public 
records  and  other  evidences  of  my  conduct  must  witness  to  you 
and  to  the  world.  To  myself,  the  assurance  of  my  own  conscience, 
is,  that  I  have  at  least  believed  myself  to  be  guided  by  them. 

In  relation  to  the  still  subsisting  war  in  Europe,  my  procla- 
mation of  the  22d  of  April,  1793,  is  the  index  of  my  plan.  Sanc- 
tioned by  your  approving  voice,  and  by  that  of  your  Represen- 
tatives in  both  Houses  of  Congress,  the  spirit  of  that  measure 
has  continually  governed  me,  uninfluenced  by  any  attempts  to 
deter  or  divert  me  from  it. 

After  deliberate  examination,  with  the  aid  of  the  best  lights 
I  could  obtain,  I  was  well  satisfied  that  our  country,  under  all 
the  circumstances  of  the  case,  had  a  right  to  take,  and  was 
bound  in  duty  and  interest  to  take,  a  neutral  position.  Having 
taken  it,  I  determined,  as  far  as  should  depend  upon  me,  to 
maintain  it,  with  moderation,  perseverance  and  firmness. 

The  considerations  which  respect  the  right  to  hold  this  con- 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS         127 

duct,  it  is  not  necessary  on  this  occasion  to  detail.  I  will  only 
observe,  that,  according  to  my  understanding  of  the  matter, 
that  right,  so  far  from  being  denied  by  any  of  the  belligerent 
powers,  has  been  virtually  admitted  by  all. 

The  duty  of  holding  a  neutral  conduct  may  be  inferred,  with- 
out any  thing  more,  from  the  obligation  which  justice  and  hu- 
manity impose  on  every  nation,  in  cases  in  which  it  is  free  to 
act,  to  maintain  inviolate  the  relations  of  peace  and  amity 
towards  other  nations. 

The  inducements  of  interest  for  observing  that  conduct  will 
best  be  referred  to  your  own  reflections  and  experience.  With 
me  a  predominant  motive  has  been  to  endeavor  to  gain  time  to 
our  country  to  settle  and  mature  its  yet  recent  institutions,  and 
to  progress  without  interruption  to  that  degree  of  strength  and 
consistency,  which  is  necessary  to  give  it,  humanly  speaking, 
the  command  of  its  own  fortunes. 

Though,  hi  reviewing  the  incidents  of  my  administration,  I 
am  unconscious  of  intentional  error,  I  am  nevertheless  too  sen- 
sible of  my  defects  not  to  think  it  probable  that  I  may  have 
committed  many  errors.  Whatever  they  may  be  I  fervently 
beseech  the  Almighty  to  avert  or  mitigate  the  evils  to  which  they 
may  tend.  I  shall  also  carry  with  me  the  hope,  that  my  country 
will  never  cease  to  view  them  with  indulgence;  and  that,  after 
forty-five  years  of  my  life  dedicated  to  its  service  with  an  up- 
right zeal,  the  faults  of  incompetent  abilities  will  be  consigned 
to  oblivion,  as  myself  must  soon  be  to  the  mansions  of  rest. 

Relying  on  its  kindness  hi  this  as  in  other  things,  and  actu- 
ated by  that  fervent  love  towards  it,  which  is  so  natural  to  a 
man  who  views  in  it  the  native  soil  of  himself  and  his  progeni- 
tors for  several  generations,  I  anticipate  with  pleasing  expecta- 
tion that  retreat,  hi  which  I  promise  myself  to  realize,  without 
alloy,  the  sweet  enjoyment  of  partaking,  in  the  midst  of  my 
fellow-citizens,  the  benign  influence  of  good  laws  under  a  free 
government,  the  ever  favorite  object  of  my  heart,  and  the  happy 
reward,  as  I  trust,  of  our  mutual  cares,  labors,  and  dangers. 


ia8  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE 

JAMES  MONROE 

[James  Monroe  (1758-1831),  the  fifth  President  of  the  United  States, 
was  born  in  Westmoreland  County,  Virginia.  After  the  Revolutionary  War, 
in  which  he  had  served,  Monroe  entered  public  life,  at  first  rilling  minor 
offices  and  later  serving  as  governor  of  Virginia,  United  States  senator, 
minister  to  England,  minister  to  France,  secretary  of  state  under  President 
Madison,  and  was  twice  elected  President  of  the  United  States.  One  of  the 
leading  events  of  his  administration  was  the  announcement  of  the  principle 
of  foreign  policy  that  has  come  to  be  called  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  The 
enunciation  of  this  policy  was  in  the  Presidential  message  of  December,  1823, 
and  was  made  necessary  by  certain  things  done  by  Russia  and  by  Spain.  The 
former  had  taken  possession  of  Alaska  and  was  extending  its  settlements 
down  the  Pacific  Coast.  The  latter  was  seeking  the  aid  of  other  European 
countries  in  recovering  control  of  his  American  colonies  which  had  rebelled 
and  won  a  temporary  freedom.  England  was  desirous  for  commercial  rea- 
sons that  these  new  republics  should  not  fall  under  the  power  of  Spain 
again,  and  proposed  to  the  United  States  that  they  jointly  should  help  the 
South  American  countries  to  maintain  their  freedom.  Monroe,  however, 
thought  it  best  to  make  the  declaration  independent  of  Great  Britain.  This 
doctrine  was  not  new  with  Monroe.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  had  been  a  set- 
tled policy  for  years  before  being  proclaimed  by  Monroe.  It  was  effective  at 
the  time  in  checking  the  encroachments  of  Russia  and  Spain,  and  since 
then  has  been  called  into  operation  on  several  occasions,  the  most  notable 
being  in  1865  against  France  in  Mexico,  and  in  1895  against  England  in 
Venezuela.  The  statement  of  the  original  Monroe  Doctrine  appears  in  two 
passages  of  the  Message,  which  are  as  follows:] 

At  the  proposal  of  the  Russian  Imperial  Government,  made 
through  the  minister  of  the  Emperor  residing  here,  a  full  power 
and  instructions  have  been  transmitted  to  the  minister  of  the 
United  States  at  St.  Petersburg  to  arrange  by  amicable  negotia- 
tion the  respective  rights  and  interests  of  the  two  nations  on 
the  northwest  coast  of  this  continent.  A  similar  proposal  had 
been  made  by  His  Imperial  Majesty  to  the  Government  of 
Great  Britain,  which  has  likewise  been  acceded  to.  The  Govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  has  been  desirous  by  this  friendly 
proceeding  of  manifesting  the  great  value  which  they  have  in- 
variably attached  to  the  friendship  of  the  Emperor  and  their 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS        129 

solicitude  to  cultivate  the  best  understanding  with  his  Govern- 
ment. 

In  the  discussions  to  which  this  interest  has  given  rise  and  in 
the  arrangements  by  which  they  may  terminate,  the  occasion 
has  been  judged  proper  for  asserting,  as  a  principle  in  which  the 
rights  and  interests  of  the  United  States  are  involved,  that  the 
American  continents,  by  the  free  and  independent  condition 
which  they  have  assumed  and  maintain,  are  henceforth  not  to 
be  considered  as  subjects  for  future  colonization  by  any  Euro- 
pean powers.  .  .  . 

It  was  stated  at  the  commencement  of  the  last  session  that 
a  great  effort  was  then  making  in  Spain  and  Portugal  to  im- 
prove the  condition  of  the  people  of  those  countries,  and  that  it 
appeared  to  be  conducted  with  extraordinary  moderation.  It 
need  scarcely  be  remarked  that  the  result  has  been  so  far  very 
different  from  what  was  then  anticipated.  Of  events  hi  that 
quarter  of  the  globe,  with  which  we  have  so  much  intercourse 
and  from  which  we  derive  our  origin,  we  have  always  been  anxious 
and  interested  spectators.  The  citizens  of  the  United  States 
cherish  sentiments  the  most  friendly  in  favor  of  the  liberty  and 
happiness  of  their  fellowmen  on  that  side  of  the  Atlantic.  In 
the  wars  of  the  European  powers  in  matters  relating  to  them- 
selves we  have  never  taken  any  part,  nor  does  it  comport  with 
our  policy  so  to  do.  It  is  only  when  our  rights  are  invaded  or 
seriously  menaced  that  we  resent  injuries  or  make  preparation 
for  our  defense. 

With  the  movements  in  this  hemisphere  we  are  of  necessity 
more  immediately  connected,  and  by  causes  which  must  be 
obvious  to  all  enlightened  and  impartial  observers.  The  political 
system  of  the  allied  powers  is  essentially  different  in  this  respect 
from  that  of  America.  This  difference  proceeds  from  that  which 
exists  in  their  respective  Governments;  and  to  the  defense  of 
our  own,  which  has  been  achieved  by  the  loss  of  so  much  blood 
and  treasure,  and  matured  by  the  wisdom  of  their  most  en- 
lightened citizens,  and  under  which  we  have  enjoyed  unexampled 
felicity,  this  whole  nation  is  devoted. 
i 


130  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

We  owe  it,  therefore,  to  candor  and  the  amicable  relations 
existing  between  the  United  States  and  those  powers  to  declare 
that  we  should  consider  any  attempt  on  their  part  to  extend 
their  system  to  any  portion  of  this  hemisphere  as  dangerous  to 
our  peace  and  safety.  With  the  existing  colonies  or  dependencies 
of  any  European  power  we  have  not  interfered  and  shall  not 
interfere.  But  with  the  Governments  who  have  declared  their 
independence  and  maintained  it,  and  whose  independence  we 
have,  on  great  consideration  and  on  just  principles,  acknowledged, 
we  could  not  view  any  interposition  for  the  purpose  of  oppress- 
ing them,  or  controlling  in  any  other  manner  their  destiny,  by 
any  European  power,  in  any  other  light  than  as  the  manifesta- 
tion of  an  unfriendly  disposition  toward  the  United  States.  In 
the  war  between  those  new  Governments  and  Spain  we  declared 
our  neutrality  at  the  time  of  their  recognition,  and  to  this  we 
have  adhered,  and  shall  continue  to  adhere,  provided  no  change 
shall  occur  which,  in  the  judgment  of  the  competent  authorities 
of  this  Government,  shall  make  a  corresponding  change  on  the 
part  of  the  United  States  indispensable  to  their  security. 

The  late  events  in  Spain  and  Portugal  show  that  Europe  is 
still  unsettled.  Of  this  important  fact  no  stronger  proof  can  be 
adduced  than  that  the  allied  powers  should  have  thought  it 
proper,  on  any  principle  satisfactory  to  themselves,  to  have  in- 
terposed by  force  in  the  internal  concerns  of  Spain.  To  what 
extent  such  interposition  may  be  carried,  on  the  same  principle, 
is  a  question  in  which  all  independent  powers  whose  govern- 
ments differ  from  theirs  are  interested,  even  those  most  remote, 
and  surely  none  more  so  than  the  United  States. 

Our  policy  in  regard  to  Europe,  which  was  adopted  at  an 
early  stage  of  the  wars  which  have  so  long  agitated  that  quarter 
of  the  globe,  nevertheless  remains  the  same,  which  is,  not  to 
interfere  in  the  internal  concerns  of  any  of  its  powers;  to  con- 
sider the  government  de  facto  as  the  legitimate  government  for 
us;  to  cultivate  friendly  relations  with  it,  and  to  preserve  those 
relations  by  a  frank,  firm,  and  manly  policy,  meeting  in  all 
instances  the  just  claims  of  every  power,  submitting  to  injuries 
from  none. 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS         131 

But  in  regard  to  those  continents  circumstances  are  eminently 
and  conspicuously  different.  It  is  impossible  that  the  allied 
powers  should  extend  their  political  system  to  any  portion  of 
either  continent  without  endangering  our  peace  and  happiness-, 
nor  can  any  one  believe  that  our  southern  brethren,  if  left  to 
themselves,  would  adopt  it  of  then-  own  accord.  It  is  equally 
impossible,  therefore,  that  we  should  behold  such  interposition 
in  any  form  with  indifference. 

If  we  look  to  the  comparative  strength  and  resources  of 
Spain  and  those  new  Governments,  and  their  distance  from 
each  other,  it  must  be  obvious  that  she  can  never  subdue 
them.  It  is  still  the  true  policy  of  the  United  States  to  leave 
the  parties  to  themselves,  in  the  hope  that  other  powers  will 
pursue  the  same  course. 


THE  STATES  AND  THE  UNION 

DANIEL  WEBSTER 

[Daniel  Webster  (1782-1852)  was  born  in  New  Hampshire,  but  in  his 
public  career  is  associated  with  Massachusetts.  He  was  twice  senator  from 
that  state;  was  secretary  of  state  under  Harrison  and  Tyler  and  under  Fill- 
more;  and  was  twice  an  unsuccessful  candidate  for  the  nomination  for 
President.  As  an  orator,  Webster  was  one  of  the  most  noted  in  the  history 
of  American  politics.  In  political  theories,  Webster  is  the  great  expounder 
and  defender  of  the  Constitution  from  the  national  point  of  view.  His  oppo- 
nents were  the  states-rights  school  of  political  thinkers  led  by  Calhoun.  In 
1832  Hayne,  of  South  Carolina,  and  Webster  engaged  in  their  memorable 
debate  over  the  rights  of  the  States  and  the  National  Government.  Hayne 
argued  for  state's  rights  and  nullification;  Webster,  for  nationality  and 
union.  Though  Hayne  was  historically  correct  in  his  interpretation  of  the 
Constitution,  he  gave  utterance  to  the  ideals  of  the  past.  Webster,  though 
historically  inaccurate  at  points,  spoke  the  mind  of  the  future,  and  pos- 
terity has  given  him  the  greater  praise.  The  extract  here  given,  though 
but  a  small  portion  of  the  entire  speech,  indicates  Webster's  position.] 

I  must  now  beg  to  ask,  Sir,  whence  is  this  supposed  right  of 
the  States  derived?  Where  do  they  find  the  power  to  interfere 
with  the  laws  of  the  Union?  Sir,  the  opinion  which  the  honorable 
gentleman  maintains  is  a  notion  founded  hi  a  total  misappre- 


132  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

hension,  in  my  judgment,  of  the  origin  of  this  government,  and 
of  the  foundation  on  which  it  stands.  I  hold  it  to  be  a  popular 
government,  erected  by  the  people;  those  who  administer  it, 
responsible  to  the  people;  and  itself  capable  of  being  amended 
and  modified,  just  as  the  people  may  choose  it  should  be.  It 
is  as  popular,  just  as  truly  emanating  from  the  people,  as  the 
State  governments.  It  is  created  for  one  purpose;  the  State 
governments  for  another.  It  has  its  own  powers;  they  have 
theirs.  There  is  no  more  authority  with  them  to  arrest  the 
operation  of  a  law  of  Congress,  than  with  Congress  to  arrest  the 
operation  of  their  laws.  We  are  here  to  administer  a  Constitu- 
tion emanating  immediately  from  the  people,  and  trusted  by 
them  to  our  administration.  It  is  not  the  creature  of  the  State 
governments.  It  is  of  no  moment  to  the  argument,  that  certain 
acts  of  the  State  legislatures  are  necessary  to  fill  our  seats  in  this 
body.  That  is  not  one  of  their  original  State  powers,  a  part  of 
the  sovereignty  of  the  State.  It  is  a  duty  which  the  people,  by 
the  Constitution  itself,  have  imposed  on  the  State  legislatures, 
and  which  they  might  have  left  to  be  performed  elsewhere,  if 
they  had  seen  fit.  So  they  have  left  the  choice  of  President  with 
electors;  but  all  this  does  not  affect  the  proposition  that  this 
whole  government,  President,  Senate,  and  House  of  Representa- 
tives, is  a  popular  government.  It  leaves  it  still  all  its  popular 
character.  The  governor  of  a  State  (in  some  of  the  States)  is 
chosen,  not  directly  by  the  people,  but  by  those  who  are  chosen 
by  the  people  for  the  purpose  of  performing,  among  other  duties, 
that  of  electing  a  governor.  Is  the  government  of  the  State,  on 
that  account,  not  a  popular  government?  This  government,  Sir, 
is  the  independent  offspring  of  the  popular  will.  It  is  not  the 
creature  of  State  legislatures;  nay  more,  if  the  whole  truth  must 
be  told,  the  people  brought  it  into  existence,  established  it,  and 
have  hitherto  supported  it,  for  the  very  purpose,  amongst 
others,  of  imposing  certain  salutary  restraints  on  State  sover- 
eignties. The  States  cannot  now  make  war;  they  cannot  con- 
tract alliances;  they  cannot  make,  each  for  itself,  separate  regu- 
lations of  commerce;  they  cannot  lay  imposts;  they  cannot  coin 
money.  If  this  Constitution,  Sir,  be  the  creature  of  State  legis- 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS         133 

latures,  it  must  be  admitted  that  it  has  obtained  a  strange  con- 
trol over  the  volitions  of  its  creators. 

The  people,  then,  Sir,  erected  this  government.  They  gave 
it  a  Constitution,  and  in  that  Constitution  they  have  enumer- 
ated the  powers  which  they  bestow  on  it.  They  have  made  it  a 
limited  government.  They  have  denned  its  authority.  They 
have  restrained  it  to  the  exercise  of  such  powers  as  are  granted; 
and  all  others,  they  declare,  are  reserved  to  the  States  or  the 
people.  But,  Sir,  they  have  not  stopped  here.  If  they  had, 
they  would  have  accomplished  but  half  their  work.  No  defini- 
tion can  be  so  clear  as  to  avoid  possibility  of  doubt;  no  limitation 
so  precise  as  to  exclude  all  uncertainty.  Who,  then,  shall  con- 
strue this  grant  of  the  people?  Who  shall  interpret  their  will, 
where  it  may  be  supposed  they  have  left  it  doubtful?  With 
whom  do  they  repose  this  ultimate  right  of  deciding  on  the  powers 
of  the  government?  Sir,  they  have  settled  all  this  in  the  fullest 
manner.  They  have  left  it  with  the  government  itself  in  its 
appropriate  branches.  Sir,  the  very  chief  end,  the  main  design 
for  which  the  whole  Constitution  was  framed  and  adopted,  was 
to  establish  a  government  that  should  not  be  obliged  to  act 
through  State  agency,  or  depend  on  State  opinion  and  State 
discretion.  The  people  had  had  quite  enough  of  that  kind  of 
government  under  the  Confederation.  Under  that  system  the 
legal  action,  the  application  of  law  to  Individuals,  belonged  ex- 
clusively to  the  States.  Congress  could  only  recommend;  their 
acts  were  not  of  binding  force  till  the  States  had  adopted  and 
sanctioned  them.  Are  we  in  that  condition  still?  Are  we  yet  at 
the  mercy  of  State  discretion  and  State  construction?  Sir,  if 
we  are,  then  vain  will  be  our  attempt  to  maintain  the  Constitu- 
tion under  which  we  sit. 

But,  Sir,  the  people  have  wisely  provided  in  the  Constitution 
itself  a  proper,  suitable  mode  and  tribunal  for  settling  questions 
of  constitutional  law.  There  are  in  the  Constitution  grants  of 
powers  to  Congress,  and  restrictions  on  these  powers.  There 
are,  also,  prohibitions  on  the  States.  Some  authority  must, 
therefore,  necessarily  exist,  having  the  ultimate  jurisdiction  to 
fix  and  ascertain  the  interpretation  of  these  grants,  restrictions, 


134  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

and  prohibitions.  The  Constitution  has  itself  pointed  out, 
ordained,  and  established  that  authority.  How  has  it  accom- 
plished this  great  and  essential  end?  By  declaring,  Sir,  that 
"the  Constitution  and  the  laws  of  the  United  States  made  in 
pursuance  thereof  shall  be  the  supreme  law  of  the  land,  any- 
thing in  the  Constitution  or  laws  of  any  State  to  the  contrary 
notwithstanding." 

This,  Sir,  was  the  first  great  step.  By  this  the  supremacy  of 
the  Constitution  and  laws  of  the  United  States  is  declared. 
The  people  so  will  it.  No  State  law  is  to  be  valid  which  comes  in 
conflict  with  the  Constitution  or  any  kw  of  the  United  States 
passed  in  pursuance  of  it.  But  who  shall  decide  this  question  of 
interference?  To  whom  lies  the  last  appeal?  This,  Sir,  the  Con- 
stitution itself  decides  also,  by  declaring,  "that  the  judicial  power 
shall  extend  to  all  cases  arising  under  the  Constitution  and  laws  of 
the  United  States."  These  two  provisions  cover  the  whole  ground. 
They  are,  in  truth,  the  keystone  of  the  arch !  With  these,  it  is  a 
government;  without  them  it  is  a  confederation.  In  pursuance 
of  these  clear  and  express  provisions,  Congress  established  at 
its  very  first  session,  in  the  judicial  act,  a  mode  for  carrying 
them  into  full  effect,  and  for  bringing  all  questions  of  constitu- 
tional power  to  the  final  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court.  It  then, 
Sir,  became  a  government.  It  then  had  the  means  of  self-pro- 
tection; and,  but  for  this,  it  would,  in  all  probability,  have  been 
now  among  things  which  are  past.  Having  constituted  the 
government  and  declared  its  powers,  the  people  have  further 
said  that,  since  somebody  must  decide  on  the  extent  of  these 
powers,  the  government  shall  itself  decide;  subject  always,  like 
other  popular  governments,  to  its  responsibility  to  the  people. 
And  now,  Sir,  I  repeat,  how  is  it  that  a  State  legislature  acquires 
any  power  to  interfere?  Who,  or  what,  gives  them  the  right  to 
say  to  the  people:  "We,  who  are  your  agents  and  servants  for 
one  purpose,  will  undertake  to  decide  that  your  other  agents  and 
servants,  appointed  by  you  for  another  purpose,  have  tran- 
scended the  authority  you  gave  them!"  The  reply  would  be,  I 
think,  not  impertinent:  "Who  made  you  a  judge  over  another's 
servants?  To  their  own  masters  they  stand  or  fall." 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS        135 

Sir,  I  deny  this  power  of  State  legislatures  altogether.  It 
cannot  stand  the  test  of  examination.  Gentlemen  may  say  that, 
in  an  extreme  case,  a  State  government  might  protect  the  people 
from  intolerable  oppression.  Sir,  in  such  a  case,  the  people  might 
protect  themselves  without  the  aid  of  the  State  governments. 
Such  a  case  warrants  revolution.  It  must  make,  when  it  comes, 
a  law  for  itself.  A  nullifying  act  of  a  State  legislature  cannot 
alter  the  case,  nor  make  resistance  any  more  lawful.  In  main- 
taining these  sentiments,  Sir,  I  am  but  asserting  the  rights  of  the 
people.  I  state  what  they  have  declared,  and  insist  on  their 
right  to  declare  it.  They  have  chosen  to  repose  this  power  in 
the  general  government,  and1 1  think  it  my  duty  to  support  it, 
like  other  constitutional  powers.  .  .  . 

But,  Sir,  what  is  this  danger,  and  what  the  grounds  of  it? 
Let  it  be  remembered  that  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
is  not  unalterable.  It  is  to  continue  in  its  present  form  no  longer 
than  the  people  who  established  it  shall  choose  to  continue  it. 
If  they  shall  become  convinced  that  they  have  made  an  injudi- 
cious or  inexpedient  partition  and  distribution  of  power  be- 
tween the  State  governments  and  the  general  government,  they 
can  alter  that  distribution  at  will. 

If  anything  be  found  in  the  national  Constitution  either  by 
original  provision  or  subsequent  interpretation,  which  ought  not 
to  be  in  it,  the  people  know  how  to  get  rid  of  it.  If  any  construc- 
tion unacceptable  to  them  be  established,  so  as  to  become  prac- 
tically a  part  of  the  Constitution,  they  will  amend  it  at  their  own 
sovereign  pleasure.  But  while  the  people  choose  to  maintain  it 
as  it  is,  while  they  are  satisfied  with  it,  and  refuse  to  change  it, 
who  has  given,  or  who  can  give,  to  the  State  legislatures  a  right 
to  alter  it  either  by  interference,  construction,  or  otherwise? 
Gentlemen  do  not  seem  to  recollect  that  the  people  have  any 
power  to  do  anything  for  themselves.  They  imagine  there  is  no 
safety  for  them,  any  longer  than  they  are  under  the  close  guar- 
dianship of  the  State  legislatures.  Sir,  the  people  have  not  trusted 
their  safety,  in  regard  to  the  general  Constitution,  to  these 
hands.  They  have  required  other  security,  and  taken  other 
bonds.  They  have  chosen  to  trust  themselves,  first,  to  the  plain 


I36  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

words  of  the  instrument,  and  to  such  construction  as  the  govern- 
ment itself,  in  doubtful  cases,  should  put  on  its  own  powers, 
under  its  oaths  of  office,  and  subject  to  its  responsibility  to 
them;  just  as  the  people  of  a  State  trust  their  own  State  govern- 
ments with  a  similar  power.  Secondly,  they  have  reposed  their 
trust  in  the  efficacy  of  frequent  elections  and  in  their  own  power 
to  remove  their  own  servants  and  agents  whenever  they  see 
cause.  Thirdly,  they  have  reposed  trust  in  the  judicial  power, 
which,  in  order  that  it  might  be  trustworthy,  they  have  made  as 
respectable,  as  disinterested,  and  as  independent  as  was  prac- 
ticable. Fourthly,  they  have  seen  fit  to  rely,  in  case  of  necessity 
or  high  expediency,  on  their  known  and  admitted  power  to 
alter  or  amend  the  Constitution  peaceably  and  quietly,  whenever 
experience  shall  point  out  defects  or  imperfections.  And,  finally, 
the  people  of  the  United  States  have  at  no  time,  in  no  way, 
directly  or  indirectly,  authorized  any  State  legislature  to  con- 
strue or  interpret  their  high  instrument  of  government;  much 
less  to  interfere  by  their  own  power  to  arrest  its  course  and 
operation. 

If,  Sir,  the  people  in  these  respects  had  done  otherwise  than 
they  have  done,  their  Constitution  could  neither  have  been  pre- 
served, nor  would  it  have  been  worth  preserving.  And  if  its 
plain  provisions  shall  now  be  disregarded,  and  these  new  doc- 
trines interpolated  in  it,  it  will  become  as  feeble  and  helpless  a 
being  as  its  enemies,  whether  early  or  more  recent,  could  possibly 
desire.  It  will  exist  in  every  State  but  as  a  poor  dependant  on 
State  permission.  It  must  borrow  leave  to  be;  and  will  be  no 
longer  than  State  pleasure,  or  State  discretion,  sees  fit  to  grant 
the  indulgence  and  to  prolong  its  poor  existence. 

But,  Sir,  although  there  are  fears,  there  are  hopes  also.  The 
people  have  preserved  this,  their  own  chosen  Constitution,  for 
forty  years,  and  have  seen  their  happiness,  prosperity,  and  re- 
nown grow  with  its  growth,  and  strengthen  with  its  strength. 
They  are  now,  generally,  strongly  attached  to  it.  Overthrown 
by  direct  assault,  it  cannot  be;  evaded,  undermined,  nullified, 
it  will  not  be,  if  we,  and  those  who  shall  succeed  us  here  as 
agents  and  representatives  of  the  people,  shall  conscientiously 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS        137 

and  vigilantly  discharge  the  two  great  branches  of  our  public 
trust,  faithfully  to  preserve,  and  wisely  to  administer  it. 

Mr.  President,  I  have  thus  stated  the  reasons  of  my  dissent 
to  the  doctrines  which  have  been  advanced  and  maintained. 
I  am  conscious  of  having  detained  you  and  the  Senate  much  too 
long.  I  was  drawn  into  the  debate  with  no  previous  deliberation 
such  as  is  suited  to  the  discussion  of  so  grave  and  important  a 
subject.  But  it  is  a  subject  of  which  my  heart  is  full,  and  I 
have  not  been  willing  to  suppress  the  utterance  of  its  spontan- 
eous sentiments.  I  cannot,  even  now,  persuade  myself  to 
relinquish  it  without  expressing  once  more  my  deep  conviction 
that,  since  it  respects  nothing  less  than  the  Union  of  the  States, 
it  is  of  most  vital  and  essential  importance  to  the  public  happi- 
ness. I  profess,  Sir,  in  my  career  hitherto  to  have  kept  steadily 
in  view  the  prosperity  and  honor  of  the  whole  country,  and  the 
preservation  of  our  Federal  Union.  It  is  to  that  Union  we  owe 
our  safety  at  home,  and  our  consideration  and  dignity  abroad. 
It  is  to  that  Union  that  we  are  chiefly  indebted  for  whatever 
makes  us  most  proud  of  our  country.  That  Union  we  reached 
only  by  the  discipline  of  our  virtues  in  the  severe  school  of  ad- 
versity. It  had  its  origin  in  the  necessities  of  disordered  finance, 
prostrate  commerce,  and  ruined  credit.  Under  its  benign  influ- 
ences, these  great  interests  immediately  awoke  as  from  the  dead, 
and  sprang  forth  with  newness  of  life.  Every  year  of  its  duration 
has  teemed  with  fresh  proofs  of  its  utility  and  its  blessings;  and 
although  our  territory  has  stretched  out  wider  and  wider,  and 
our  population  spread  farther  and  farther,  they  have  not  out- 
run its  protection  or  its  benefits.  It  has  been  to  us  all  a  copious 
fountain  of  national,  social,  and  personal  happiness. 

I  have  not  allowed  myself,  Sir,  to  look  beyond  the  Union  to 
see  what  might  lie  hidden  in  the  dark  recess  behind.  I  have  not 
coolly  weighed  the  chances  of  preserving  liberty,  when  the  bonds 
that  unite  us  together  shall  be  broken  asunder.  I  have  not 
accustomed  myself  to  hang  over  the  precipice  of  disunion,  to 
see  whether,  with  my  short  sight,  I  can  fathom  the  depth  of  the 
abyss  below;  nor  could  I  regard  him  as  a  safe  counsellor  hi  the 
affairs  of  this  government,  whose  thoughts  should  be  mainly 


i38  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

bent  on  considering,  not  how  the  Union  should  be  best  preserved, 
but  how  tolerable  might  be  the  condition  of  the  people  when  it 
should  be  broken  up  and  destroyed.  While  the  Union  lasts,  we 
have  high,  exciting,  gratifying  prospects  spread  out  before  us — 
for  us  and  our  children.  Beyond  that,  I  seek  not  to  penetrate  the 
veil.  God  grant  that,  in  my  day,  at  least,  that  curtain  may  not 
rise!  God  grant  that  on  my  vision  never  may  be  opened  what 
lies  behind!  When  my  eyes  shall  be  turned  to  behold  for  the 
last  time  the  sun  in  heaven,  may  I  not  see  him  shining  on  the 
broken  and  dishonored  fragments  of  a  once  glorious  Union;  on 
States  dissevered,  discordant,  belligerent;  on  a  land  rent  with 
civil  feuds,  or  drenched,  it  may  be,  in  fraternal  blood !  Let  then- 
last  feeble  and  lingering  glance  rather  behold  the  gorgeous  ensign 
of  the  Republic,  now  known  and  honored  throughout  the  earth, 
still  full  high  advanced,  its  arms  and  trophies  streaming  in  their 
original  lustre,  not  a  stripe  erased  or  polluted,  nor  a  single  star 
obscured;  bearing  for  its  motto,  no  such  miserable  interrogatory 
as  "What  is  all  this  worth?"  nor  those  other  words  of  delusion 
and  folly,  "Liberty  first,  and  Union  afterwards;"  but  every- 
where, spread  all  over  in  characters  of  living  light,  blazing  on 
all  its  ample  folds,  as  they  float  over  the  sea  and  over  the  land 
and  hi  every  wind  under  the  whole  heavens,  that  other  senti- 
ment, dear  to  every  true  American  heart — Liberty  and  Union, 
now  and  forever,  one  and  inseparable! 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS        139 


SECOND  INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

[Abraham  Lincoln  (1809-1865),  the  sixteenth  President  of  the  United 
States,  was  born  in  Hardin  (now  Larue)  County,  Kentucky.  As  a  very  young 
boy,  he  removed  with  his  parents  to  Indiana.  His  early  education  was 
scanty;  a  little  reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic  was  all.  But  taking  hold  of 
the  hard  facts  of  life  and  being  stimulated  and  educated  by  necessity, 
Lincoln  steadily  rose  to  positions  of  public  trust  and  usefulness.  By  middle 
life  he  had  come  to  stand  high  at  the  Bar  and  seemed  to  be  becoming  more 
and  more  interested  in  his  profession.  But  the  slavery  agitation  drew  him 
into  politics,  and  in  the  famous  debates  with  Stephen  A.  Douglas  on  this 
question  Lincoln  rose  to  be  the  leader  of  the  Republican  party.  In  1860  he 
was  nominated  and  elected  to  the  Presidency,  and  in  1864  he  was  reelected. 
His  career  as  President  was  ended  by  his  death  at  the  hand  of  an  assassin, 
April  14,  1865.  His  Second  Inaugural  Address  was  delivered  on  March  4, 
1865.  It  is  a  political  document  marked  by  a  feeling  of  mingled  hopefulness 
and  determination,  and  by  the  absence  of  sectional  bitterness.  Lincoln 
himself  thought  it  would  "wear  as  well"  as  anything  he  had  produced.  For 
further  light  on  Lincoln's  character  see  the  selection,  Lincoln  as  an  Ameri- 
can, by  Croly,  this  volume,  page  74.] 

Fellow-Countrymen — At  this  second  appearing  to  take  the 
oath  of  the  Presidential  office,  there  is  less  occasion  for  an 
extended  address  than  there  was  at  the  first.  Then  a  statement 
somewhat  in  detail  of  a  course  to  be  pursued  seemed  very  fitting 
and  proper.  Now,  at  the  expiration  of  four  years,  during  which 
public  declarations  have  been  constantly  called  forth  on  every 
point  and  phase  of  the  great  contest  which  still  absorbs  the 
attention  and  engrosses  the  energies  of  the  nation,  little  that  is 
new  could  be  presented. 

The  progress  of  our  arms,  upon  which  all  else  chiefly  depends, 
is  as  well  known  to  the  public  as  to  myself,  and  it  is,  I  trust, 
reasonably  satisfactory  and  encouraging  to  all.  With  high  hope 
for  the  future,  no  prediction  in  regard  to  it  is  ventured. 

On  the  occasion  corresponding  to  this  four  years  ago,  all 
thoughts  were  anxiously  directed  to  an  impending  civil  war.  All 
dreaded  it,  all  sought  to  avoid  it.  While  the  inaugural  address 
was  being  delivered  from  this  place,  devoted  altogether  to  saving 


I4o  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

the  Union  without  war,  insurgent  agents  were  in  the  city,  seeking 
to  destroy  it  with  war — seeking  to  dissolve  the  Union  and  divide 
the  effects  by  negotiation.  Both  parties  deprecated  war,  but 
one  of  them  would  make  war  rather  than  let  the  nation  survive, 
and  the  other  would  accept  war  rather  than  let  it  perish,  and  the 
war  came.  One-eighth  of  the  whole  population  were  colored 
slaves,  not  distributed  generally  over  the  Union,  but  localized  in 
the  southern  part  of  it.  These  slaves  constituted  a  peculiar  and 
powerful  interest.  All  knew  that  this  interest  was  somehow  the 
cause  of  the  war.  To  strengthen,  perpetuate,  and  extend  this 
interest  was  the  object  for  which  the  insurgents  would  rend 
the  Union  by  war,  while  the  Government  claimed  no  right  to  do 
more  than  to  restrict  the  territorial  enlargement  of  it. 

Neither  party  expected  for  the  war  the  magnitude  or  the 
duration  which  it  has  already  attained.  Neither  anticipated 
that  the  cause  of  the  conflict  might  cease,  even  before  the  con- 
flict itself  should  cease.  Each  looked  for  an  easier  triumph,  and  a 
result  less  fundamental  and  astounding. 

Both  read  the  same  Bible  and  pray  to  the  same  God,  and  each 
invokes  His  aid  against  the  other.  It  may  seem  strange  that  any 
men  should  dare  to  ask  a  just  God's  assistance  in  wringing  their 
bread  from  the  sweat  of  other  men's  faces,  but  let  us  judge  not, 
that  we  be  not  judged.  The  prayer  of  both  could  not  be  answered. 
That  of  neither  has  been  answered  fully.  The  Almighty  has  His 
own  purposes.  Woe  unto  the  world  because  of  offences,  for  it 
must  needs  be  that  offences  come,  but  woe  to  that  man  by  whom 
the  offence  cometh.  If  we  shall  suppose  that  American  slavery 
is  one  of  these  offences  which,  in  the  providence  of  God,  must 
needs  come,  but  which  having  continued  through  His  appointed 
tune,  He  now  wills  to  remove,  and  that  He  gives  to  both  North 
and  South  this  terrible  war  as  the  woe  due  to  those  by  whom  the 
offence  came,  shall  we  discern  there  any  departure  from  those 
Divine  attributes  which  the  believers  in  a  living  God  always 
ascribe  to  Him?  Fondly  do  we  hope,  fervently  do  we  pray,  that 
this  mighty  scourge  of  war  may  speedily  pass  away.  Yet  if 
God  wills  that  it  continue  until  all  the  wealth  piled  by  the  bonds- 
man's two  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  unrequited  toil  shall  be 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS        141 

sunk,  and  until  every  drop  of  blood  drawn  with  the  lash  shall  be 
paid  by  another  drawn  with  the  sword,  as  was  said  three 
thousand  years  ago,  so,  still  it  must  be  said,  that  the  judgments 
of  the  Lord  are  true  and  righteous  altogether. 

With  malice  towards  none,  with  charity  for  all,  with  firmness 
in  the  right  as  God  gives  us  to  see  the  right,  let  us  finish  the  work 
we  are  in,  to  bind  up  the  nation's  wounds,  to  care  for  him  who 
shall  have  borne  the  battle,  and  for  his  widow  and  his  orphans, 
to  do  all  which  may  achieve  and  cherish  a  just  and  a  lasting 
peace  among  ourselves  and  with  all  nations. 


WAR  MESSAGE— APRIL  2,  1917 
WOODROW  WILSON 

[Woodrow  Wilson  (1856 ),  the  twenty-eighth  President  of  the 

United  States,  was  born  in  Staunton,  Virginia.  After  'graduating  from 
Princeton  in  1879,  he  studied  law  at  the  University  of  Virginia  and  began 
practice  at  Atlanta,  Georgia.  Later  he  studied  history  and  politics  at  Johns 
Hopkins  University,  and  taught  those  subjects  successively  at  Bryn  Mawr, 
Wesleyan,  and  Princeton.  In  1902  he  became  president  of  Princeton,  and 
continued  in  this  position  until  his  political  career  began  in  1910  with  his 
election  as  governor  of  New  Jersey.  Two  years  later  he  was  elected  President 
of  the  United  States,  and  in  1916  he  was  reelected.  His  state  papers — espe- 
cially those  dealing  with  the  relations  between  the  United  States  and  Ger- 
many— have  commanded  wide  attention  for  their  statesmanlike  principles 
and  their  forcible  style.  Of  these  several  papers — all  of  which  are  worthy  of 
attention — this  one  of  April  2,  1917,  in  which  he  laid  before  Congress  the 
facts  and  suggested  a  declaration  of  war,  will  always  be  memorable.] 

I  have  called  the  Congress  into  extraordinary  session  be- 
cause there  are  serious,  very  serious,  choices  of  policy  to  be  made, 
and  made  immediately,  which  it  was  neither  right  nor  constitu- 
tionally permissible  that  I  should  assume  the  responsibility  of 
making. 

On  the  3d  of  February  last  I  officially  laid  before  you  the 
extraordinary  announcement  of  the  Imperial  German  Govern- 
ment that  on  and  after  the  first  day  of  February  it  was  its 
purpose  to  put  aside  all  restraints  of  law  or  of  humanity  and  use 


i42  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

its  submarines  to  sink  every  vessel  that  sought  to  approach 
either  the  ports  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  or  the  western 
coasts  of  Europe  or  any  of  the  ports  controlled  by  the  enemies 
of  Germany  within  the  Mediterranean.  That  had  seemed  to  be 
the  object  of  the  German  submarine  warfare  earlier  in  the  war, 
but  since  April  of  last  year  the  Imperial  Government  had  some- 
what restrained  the  commanders  of  its  undersea  craft  in  con- 
formity with  its  promise  then  given  to  us  that  passenger-boats 
should  not  be  sunk,  and  that  due  warning  would  be  given  to 
all  other  vessels  which  its  submarines  might  seek  to  destroy 
where  no  resistance  was  offered  or  escape  attempted,  and  care 
taken  that  their  crews  were  given  at  least  a  fair  chance  to  save 
their  lives  in  their  open  boats. 

The  precautions  taken  were  meager  and  haphazard  enough, 
as  was  proved  in  distressing  instance  after  instance  in  the  prog- 
ress of  the  cruel  and  unmanly  business,  but  a  certain  degree  of 
restraint  was  observed. 

The  new  policy  has  swept  every  restriction  aside.  Vessels  of 
every  kind,  whatever  their  flag,  their  character,  their  cargo, 
their  destination,  their  errand,  have  been  ruthlessly  sent  to  the 
bottom  without  warning,  and  without  thought  of  help  or  mercy 
for  those  on  board,  the  vessels  of  friendly  neutrals  along  with 
those  of  belligerents.  Even  hospital-ships  and  ships  carrying 
relief  to  the  sorely  bereaved  and  stricken  people  of  Belgium, 
though  the  latter  were  provided  with  safe  conduct  through  the 
proscribed  areas  by  the  German  Government  itself  and  were  dis- 
tinguished by  unmistakable  marks  of  identity,  have  been  sunk 
with  the  same  reckless  lack  of  compassion  or  of  principle. 

I  was  for  a  little  while  unable  to  believe  that  such  things 
would,  in  fact,  be  done  by  any  Government  that  had  hitherto 
subscribed  to  the  humane  practices  of  civilized  nations.  Inter- 
national law  had  its  origin  in  the  attempt  to  set  up  some  law 
which  would  be  respected  and  observed  upon  the  seas,  where  no 
nation  had  right  of  dominion,  and  where  lay  the  free  highways 
of  the  world.  By  painful  stage  after  stage  has  that  law  been 
built  up  with  meager  enough  results,  indeed,  after  all  was 
accomplished  that  could  be  accomplished,  but  always  with  a 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS         143 

clear  view  at  least  of  what  the  heart  and  conscience  of  mankind 
demanded. 

This  minimum  of  right  the  German  Government  has  swept 
aside  under  the  plea  of  retaliation  and  necessity,  and  because  it 
had  no  weapons  which  it  could  use  at  sea  except  these,  which  it 
is  impossible  to  employ  as  it  is  employing  them  without  throw- 
ing to  the  winds  all  scruples  of  humanity  or  of  respect  for  the 
understandings  that  were  supposed  to  underlie  the  intercourse 
of  the  world. 

I  am  not  now  thinking  of  the  loss  of  property  involved, 
immense  and  serious  as  that  is,  but  only  of  the  wanton  and  whole- 
sale destruction  of  the  lives  of  non-combatants,  men,  women, 
and  children  engaged  in  pursuits  which  have  always,  even  in  the 
darkest  periods  of  modern  history,  been  deemed  innocent  and 
legitimate. 

Property  can  be  paid  for;  the  lives  of  peaceful  and  innocent 
people  cannot  be. 

The  present  German  warfare  against  commerce  is  a  warfare 
against  mankind.  It  is  a  war  against  all  nations.  American 
ships  have  been  sunk,  American  lives  taken,  in  ways  which  it  has 
stirred  us  very  deeply  to  learn  of,  but  the  ships  and  people  of 
other  neutral  and  friendly  nations  have  been  sunk  and  over- 
whelmed in  the  waters  in  the  same  way.  There  has  been  no  dis- 
crimination. The  challenge  is  to  all  mankind.  Each  nation 
must  decide  for  itself  how  it  will  meet  it.  The  choice  we  make 
for  ourselves  must  be  made  with  a  moderation  of  counsel  and  a 
temperateness  of  judgment  befitting  our  character  and  our 
motives  as  a  nation.  We  must  put  excited  feeling  away. 

Our  motive  will  not  be  revenge  or  the  victorious  assertion  of 
the  physical  might  of  the  nation,  but  only  the  vindication  of 
right,  of  human  right,  of  which  we  are  only  a  single  champion. 

When  I  addressed  the  Congress  on  the  26th  of  February  last 
I  thought  that  it  would  suffice  to  assert  our  neutral  rights  with 
arms,  our  right  to  use  the  seas  against  unlawful  interference, 
our  right  to  keep  our  people  safe  against  unlawful  violence.  But 
armed  neutrality,  it  now  appears,  is  impracticable.  Because 
submarines  are  in  effect  outlaws  when  used  as  the  German 


144  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

submarines  have  been  used  against  merchant  shipping,  it  is 
impossible  to  defend  ships  against  their  attacks  as  the  law  of 
nations  has  assumed  that  merchantmen  would  defend  them- 
selves against  privateers  or  cruisers,  visible  craft  giving  chase 
upon  the  open  sea. 

It  is  common  prudence  in  such  circumstances,  grim  necessity, 
indeed,  to  endeavor  to  destroy  them  before  they  have  shown  their 
own  intention.  They  must  be  dealt  with  upon  sight,  if  dealt 
with  at  all. 

The  German  Government  denies  the  right  of  neutrals  to  use 
arms  at  all  within  the  areas  of  the  sea  which  it  has  proscribed, 
even  in  the  defense  of  rights  which  no  modern  publicist  has  ever 
before  questioned  their  right  to  defend.  The  intimation  is  con- 
veyed that  the  armed  guards  which  we  have  placed  on  our  mer- 
chant-ships will  be  treated  as  beyond  the  pale  of  law  and  subject 
to  be  dealt  with  as  pirates  would  be. 

Armed  neutrality  is  ineffectual  enough  at  best;  in  such  cir- 
cumstances and  in  the  face  of  such  pretensions  it  is  worse  than 
ineffectual;  it  is  likely  to  produce  what  it  was  meant  to  prevent; 
it  is  practically  certain  to  draw  us  into  the  war  without  either 
the  rights  or  the  effectiveness  of  belligerents. 

There  is  one  choice  we  cannot  make,  we  are  incapable  of  mak- 
ing: we  will  not  choose  the  path  of  submission  and  suffer  the 
most  sacred  rights  of  our  nation  and  our  people  to  be  ignored  or 
violated.  The  wrongs  against  which  we  now  array  ourselves 
are  not  common  wrongs;  they  reach  out  to  the  very  roots  of 
human  life. 

With  a  profound  sense  of  the  solemn  and  even  tragical  char- 
acter of  the  step  I  am  taking  and  of  the  grave  responsibilities 
which  it  involves,  but  in  unhesitating  obedience  to  what  I  deem 
my  constitutional  duty,  I  advise  that  the  Congress  declare  the 
recent  course  of  the  Imperial  German  Government  to  be  in  fact 
nothing  less  than  war  against  the  Government  and  people  of 
the  United  States.  That  it  formally  accept  the  status  of  belliger- 
ent which  has  thus  been  thrust  upon  it  and  that  it  take  immedi- 
ate steps  not  only  to  put  the  country  in  a  more  thorough  state  of 
defense,  but  also  to  exert  all  its  power  and  employ  all  its  re- 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS         145 

sources  to  bring  the  Government  of  the  German  Empire  to 
terms  and  end  the  war. 

What  this  will  involve  is  clear.  It  will  involve  the  utmost 
practicable  cooperation  in  counsel  and  action  with  the  Govern- 
ments now  at  war  with  Germany,  and  as  incident  to  that  the 
extension  to  those  Governments  of  the  most  liberal  financial 
credits  in  order  that  our  resources  may  so  far  as  possible  be  added 
to  theirs. 

It  will  involve  the  organization  and  mobilization  of  all  the 
material  resources  of  the  country  to  supply  the  materials  of 
war  and  serve  the  incidental  needs  of  the  nation  in  the  most 
abundant  and  yet  the  most  economical  and  efficient  way  possible. 

It  will  involve  the  immediate  full  equipment  of  the  navy  in 
all  respects,  but  particularly  in  supplying  it  with  the  best  means 
of  dealing  with  the  enemy's  submarines. 

It  will  involve  the  immediate  addition  to  the  armed  forces 
of  the  United  States  already  provided  for  by  law  in  case  of  war 
at  least  500,000  men,  who  should,  in  my  opinion,  be  chosen 
upon  the  principle  of  universal  liability  to  service,  and  also  the 
authorization  of  subsequent  additional  increments  of  equal 
force  so  soon  as  they  may  be  needed  and  can  be  handled  in 
training. 

It  will  involve  also,  of  course,  the  granting  of  adequate  credits 
to  the  Government,  sustained,  I  hope,  so  far  as  they  can  equit- 
ably be  sustained  by  the  present  generation,  by  well-conceived 
taxation.  I  say  sustained  so  far  as  may  be  equitable  by  taxa- 
tion because  it  seems  to  me  that  it  would  be  most  unwise  to  base 
the  credits  which  will  now  be  necessary  entirely  on  money 
borrowed. 

It  is  our  duty,  I  most  respectfully  urge,  to  protect  our  people 
so  far  as  we  may  against  the  very  serious  hardships  and  evils 
which  would  be  likely  to  arise  out  of  the  inflation  which  would 
be  produced  by  vast  loans. 

In  carrying  out  the  measures  by  which  these  things  are  to 
be  accomplished  we  should  keep  constantly  in  mind  the  wisdom 
of  interfering  as  little  as  possible  in  our  own  preparation  and  in 
the  equipment  of  our  own  military  forces  with  the  duty — for  it 

J 


i46  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

will  be  a  very  practical  duty — of  supplying  the  nations  already 
at  war  with  Germany  with  the  materials  which  they  can  obtain 
only  from  us  or  by  our  assistance.  They  are  in  the  field  and  we 
should  help  them  in  every  way  to  be  effective  there. 

I  shall  take  the  liberty  of  suggesting,  through  the  several 
executive  departments  of  the  Government,  for  the  considera- 
tion of  your  committees,  measures  for  the  accomplishment  of 
the  several  objects  I  have  mentioned.  I  hope  that  it  will  be  your 
pleasure  to  deal  with  them  as  having  been  framed  after  very 
careful  thought  by  the  branch  of  the  Government  upon  which 
the  responsibility  of  conducting  the  war  and  safeguarding  the 
nation  will  most  directly  fall. 

While  we  do  these  things,  these  deeply  momentous  things, 
let  us  be  very  clear  and  make  very  clear  to  all  the  world 
what  our  motives  and  our  objects  are.  My  own  thought  has 
not  been  driven  from  its  habitual  and  normal  course  by  the 
unhappy  events  of  the  last  two  months,  and  I  do  not  believe 
that  the  thought  of  the  nation  has  been  altered  or  clouded 
by  them. 

I  have  exactly  the  same  thing  in  mind  now  that  I  had  in 
mind  when  I  addressed  the  Senate  on  the  22d  of  January  last; 
the  same  that  I  had  in  mind  when  I  addressed  the  Congress  on 
the  3d  of  February  and  on  the  26th  of  February. 

Our  object  now,  as  then,  is  to  vindicate  the  principles  of  peace 
and  the  justice  in  the  life  of  the  world  as  against  selfish  and 
autocratic  power  and  to  set  up  amongst  the  really  free  and  self- 
governed  peoples  of  the  world  such  a  concert  of  purpose  and  of 
action  as  will  henceforth  insure  the  observance  of  those  principles. 

Neutrality  is  no  longer  feasible  or  desirable  where  the  peace 
of  the  world  is  involved  and  the  freedom  of  its  peoples,  and  the 
menace  to  that  peace  and  freedom  lies  in  the  existence  of  auto- 
cratic Governments  backed  by  organized  force  which  is  con- 
trolled wholly  by  their  will,  not  by  the  will  of  then-  people.  We 
have  seen  the  last  of  neutrality  in  such  circumstances. 

We  are  at  the  beginning  of  an  age  in  which  it  will  be  insisted 
that  the  same  standards  of  conduct  and  of  responsibility  for 
wrong  done  shall  be  observed  among  nations  and  their  Govern- 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS         147 

ments  that  are  observed  among  the  individual  citizens  of  civilized 
states. 

We  have  no  quarrel  with  the  German  people.  We  have  no 
feeling  toward  them  but  one  of  sympathy  and  friendship.  It 
was  not  upon  their  impulse  that  their  Government  acted  in 
entering  this  war.  It  was  not  with  their  previous  knowledge  or 
approval. 

It  was  a  war  determined  upon  as  wars  used  to  be  determined 
upon  in  the  old,  unhappy  days  when  peoples  were  nowhere  con- 
sulted by  their  rulers  and  wars  were  provoked  and  waged  in  the 
interest  of  dynasties  or  little  groups  of  ambitious  men  who  were 
accustomed  to  use  their  fellowmen  as  pawns  and  tools. 

Self-governed  nations  do  not  fill  their  neighbor  states  with 
spies  or  set  the  course  of  intrigue  to  bring  about  some  critical 
posture  of  affairs  which  will  give  them  an  opportunity  to 
strike  and  make  conquest.  Such  designs  can  be  successfully 
worked  only  under  cover  and  where  no  one  has  the  right  to  ask 
questions. 

Cunningly  contrived  plans  of  deception  or  aggression,  carried, 
it  may  be,  from  generation  to  generation,  can  be  worked  out  and 
kept  from  the  light  only  within  the  privacy  of  courts  or  behind 
the  carefully  guarded  confidences  of  a  narrow  and  privileged 
class.  They  are  happily  impossible  where  public  opinion  com- 
mands and  insists  upon  full  information  concerning  all  the 
nation's  affairs. 

A  steadfast  concert  for  peace  can  never  be  maintained  except 
by  a  partnership  of  democratic  nations.  No  autocratic  Govern- 
ment could  be  trusted  to  keep  faith  within  it  or  observe  its 
covenants.  It  must  be  a  league  of  honor,  a  partnership  of  opinion. 
Intrigue  would  eat  its  vitals  away,  the  plottings  of  inner  circles 
who  could  plan  what  they  would  and  render  account  to  no  one 
would  be  a  corruption  seated  at  its  very  heart.  Only  free  peoples 
can  hold  their  purpose  and  their  honor  steady  to  a  common  end 
and  prefer  the  interests  of  mankind  to  any  narrow  interest  of 
their  own. 

Does  not  every  American  feel  that  assurance  has  been  added 
to  our  hope  for  the  future  peace  of  the  world  by  the  wonderful 


i48  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

and  heartening  things  that  have  been  happening  within  the  last 
few  weeks  in  Russia? 

Russia  was  known  by  those  who  know  it  best  to  have  been 
always  in  fact  democratic  at  heart,  in  all  the  vital  habits  of  her 
thought,  in  all  the  intimate  relationships  of  her  people  that 
spoke  their  natural  instinct,  their  habitual  attitude  toward  life. 

Autocracy  that  crowned  the  summit  of  her  political  structure, 
long  as  it  had  stood  and  terrible  as  was  the  reality  of  its 
power,  was  not  in  fact  Russian  in  origin,  in  character  or  purpose; 
and  now  it  has  been  shaken  off  and  the  great,  generous  Russian 
people  have  been  added,  in  all  their  native  majesty  and  might, 
to  the  forces  that  are  fighting  for  freedom  in  the  world,  for  justice 
and  for  peace.  Here  is  a  fit  partner  for  a  League  of  Honor. 

One  of  the  things  that  have  served  to  convince  us  that  the 
Prussian  autocracy  was  not  and  could  never  be  our  friend  is 
that  from  the  very  outset  of  the  present  war  it  has  filled  our 
unsuspecting  communities  and  even  our  offices  of  Government 
with  spies  and  set  criminal  intrigues  everywhere  afoot  against 
our  national  unity  of  council,  our  peace  within  and  without,  our 
industries  and  our  commerce. 

Indeed,  it  is  now  evident  that  its  spies  were  here  even  before 
the  war  began,  and  it  is,  unhappily,  not  a  matter  of  conjecture, 
but  a  fact  proved  in  our  courts  of  justice,  that  the  intrigues  which 
have  more  than  once  come  perilously  near  to  disturbing  the 
peace  and  dislocating  the  industries  of  the  country  have  been 
carried  on  at  the  instigation,  with  the  support,  and  even  under  the 
personal  direction,  of  official  agents  of  the  Imperial  German 
Government  accredited  to  the  Government  of  the  United  States. 

Even  in  checking  these  things  and  trying  to  extirpate  them 
we  have  sought  to  put  the  most  generous  interpretation  possible 
upon  them  because  we  knew  that  their  source  lay,  not  in  any 
hostile  feeling  or  purpose  of  the  German  people  toward  us  (who 
were,  no  doubt,  as  ignorant  of  them  as  we  ourselves  were), 
but  only  in  the  selfish  designs  of  a  Government  that  did  what  it 
pleased  and  told  its  people  nothing.  But  they  have  played  their 
part  in  serving  to  convince  us  at  last  that  that  Government 
entertains  no  real  friendship  for  us  and  means  to  act  against 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS         149 

our  peace  and  security  at  its  convenience.  That  it  means  to 
stir  up  enemies  against  us  at  our  very  doors  the  intercepted  note 
to  the  German  Minister  at  Mexico  City  is  eloquent  evidence. 

We  are  accepting  this  challenge  of  hostile  purpose  because  we 
know  that  in  such  a  Government,  following  such  methods,  we 
can  never  have  a  friend;  and  that  in  the  presence  of  its  organized 
power,  always  lying  in  wait  to  accomplish  we  know  not  what 
purpose,  there  can  be  no  assured  security  for  the  democratic 
Governments  of  the  world. 

We  are  now  about  to  accept  the  gage  of  battle  with  this 
natural  foe  to  liberty,  and  shall,  if  necessary,  spend  the  whole 
force  of  the  nation  to  check  and  nullify  its  pretensions  and  its 
power.  We  are  glad,  now  that  we  see  the  facts  with  no  veil  of 
false  pretense  about  them,  to  fight  thus  for  the  ultimate  peace  of 
the  world  and  for  the  liberation  of  its  peoples,  the  German 
people  included;  for  the  rights  of  nations  great  and  small  and 
the  privilege  of  men  everywhere  to  choose  their  way  of  life  and 
of  obedience.  The  world  must  be  made  safe  for  democracy.  Its 
peace  must  be  planted  upon  the  trusted  foundations  of  political 
liberty. 

We  have  no  selfish  ends  to  serve.  We  desire  no  conquest,  no 
dominion.  We  seek  no  indemnities  for  ourselves,  no  material 
compensation  for  the  sacrifices  we  shall  freely  make.  We  are 
but  one  of  the  champions  of  the  rights  of  mankind.  We  shall  be 
satisfied  when  those  rights  have  been  made  as  secure  as  the 
faith  and  the  freedom  of  nations  can  make  them. 

Just  because  we  fight  without  rancor  and  without  selfish 
objects,  seeking  nothing  for  ourselves  but  what  we  shall  wish  to 
share  with  all  free  peoples,  we  shall,  I  feel  confident,  conduct  our 
operations  as  belligerents  without  passion  and  ourselves  observe 
with  proud  punctilio  the  principles  of  right  and  of  fair  play  we 
profess  to  be  fighting  for. 

I  have  said  nothing  of  the  Governments  allied  with  the 
Imperial  Government  of  Germany  because  they  have  not  made 
war  upon  us  or  challenged  us  to  defend  our  right  and  our  honor. 

The  Austro-Hungarian  Government  has  indeed  avowed  its 
unqualified  indorsement  and  acceptance  of  the  reckless  and  law- 


ISO  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

less  submarine  warfare  adopted  now  without  disguise  by  the 
Imperial  German  Government,  and  it  has  therefore  not  been 
possible  for  this  Government  to  receive  Count  Tarnowski,  the 
ambassador  recently  accredited  to  this  Government  by  the 
Imperial  and  Royal  Government  of  Austro-Hungary;  but  that 
Government  has  not  actually  engaged  in  warfare  against  citizens 
of  the  United  States  on  the  seas,  and  I  take  the  liberty,  for  the 
present  at  least,  of  postponing  a  discussion  of  our  relations  with 
the  authorities  at  Vienna. 

We  enter  this  war  only  where  we  are  clearly  forced  into  it 
because  there  are  no  other  means  of  defending  our  rights. 

It  will  be  all  the  easier  for  us  to  conduct  ourselves  as  belliger- 
ents in  a  high  spirit  of  right  and  fairness  because  we  act  without 
animus,  not  in  enmity  toward  a  people  or  with  the  desire  to  bring 
any  injury  or  disadvantage  upon  them,  but  only  in  armed 
opposition  to  an  irresponsible  Government  which  has  thrown 
aside  all  considerations  of  humanity  and  of  right  and  is  running 
amuck. 

We  are,  let  me  say  again,  the  sincere  friends  of  the  German 
people,  and  shall  desire  nothing  so  much  as  the  early  reestablish- 
ment  of  intimate  relations  of  mutual  advantage  between  us, 
however  hard  it  may  be  for  them,  for  the  tune  being,  to  believe 
that  this  is  spoken  from  our  hearts.  We  have  borne  with  their 
present  Government  through  all  these  bitter  months  because  of 
that  friendship, — exercising  a  patience  and  forbearance  which 
would  otherwise  have  been  impossible. 

We  shall,  happily,  still  have  an  opportunity  to  prove  that 
friendship  in  our  daily  attitude  and  actions  towards  the  millions 
of  men  and  women  of  German  birth  and  native  sympathy  who 
live  amongst  us  and  share  our  life,  and  we  shall  be  proud  to 
prove  it  toward  all  who  are,  in  fact,  loyal  to  their  neighbors  and 
to  the  Government  in  the  hour  of  test.  They  are,  most  of  them, 
as  true  and  loyal  Americans  as  if  they  had  never  known  any 
other  fealty  or  allegiance.  They  will  be  prompt  to  stand  with  us 
in  rebuking  and  restraining  the  few  who  may  be  of  a  different 
mind  and  purpose.  If  there  should  be  disloyalty  it  will  be  dealt 
with  with  a  firm  hand  of  stern  repression,  but,  if  it  lif  ts  its  head 


LANDMARK  ADDRESSES  AND  STATE  PAPERS         151 

at  all,  it  will  lift  it  only  here  and  there  and  without  countenance 
except  from  a  lawless  and  malignant  few. 

It  is  a  distressing  and  oppressive  duty,  gentlemen  of  the  Con- 
gress, which  I  have  performed  in  thus  addressing  you.  There  are, 
it  may  be,  many  months  of  fiery  trial  and  sacrifice  ahead  of  us. 
It  is  a  fearful  thing  to  lead  this  great,  peaceful  people  into  war, 
into  the  most  terrible  and  disastrous  of  all  wars,  civilization  itself 
seeming  to  be  in  the  balance.  But  the  right  is  more  precious  than 
peace,  and  we  shall  fight  for  the  things  which  we  have  always 
carried  nearest  our  hearts — for  democracy,  for  the  right  of  those 
who  submit  to  authority  to  have  a  voice  in  their  own  govern- 
ments, for  the  rights  and  liberties  of  small  nations,  for  a  universal 
dominion  of  right  by  such  a  concert  of  free  peoples  as  shall  bring 
peace  and  safety  to  all  nations  and  make  the  world  itself  at  last 
free. 

To  such  a  task  we  can  dedicate  our  lives  and  our  fortunes, 
everything  that  we  are  and  everything  that  we  have,  with  the 
pride  of  those  who  know  that  the  day  has  come  when  America 
is  privileged  to  spend  her  blood  and  her  might  for  the  principles 
that  gave  her  birth  and  happiness  and  the  peace  which  she  has 
treasured.  God  helping  her,  she  can  do  no  other. 


AMERICAN    DEMOCRACY 

THE  HERITAGE  OF  LIBERTY1 

CHARLES  MILLS  GAYLEY 

[Charles  Mills  Gayley  (1858 )  is  professor  of  English  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  California.  After  graduating  from  the  University  of  Michigan,  he 
studied  in  Germany,  and  on  his  return  to  this  country,  occupied  positions  in 
the  University  of  Michigan  until  1889  when  he  went  to  California.  The 
selection  here  given  is  from  a  book,  Shakspere  and  the  Founders  of  Liberty 
in  America,  which  Professor  Gayley  published  in  1917  to  remind  Americans 
how  essentially  at  one  with  Englishmen  they  had  always  been  in  institu- 
tions, love  of  liberty,  and  democratic  ideals.] 

The  political  freedom  that,  between  1609  and  1640,  our  Eng- 
lish ancestors  of  Virginia  and  New  England  put  into  form  and 
practice  is  the  political  freedom  for  which  our  grand-uncles  of 
old  England  fought  from  1642  to  1649,  nay,  to  1689,  Bradford, 
and  Brewster,  Winthrop  and  Endicott,  John  Cotton  and  Roger 
Williams,  Harvard  and  Thomas  Hooker,  of  New  England, 
Alexander  Whitaker,  Clayborne,  Bennett,  and  Nathaniel  Bacon, 
of  Virginia,  belong  to  the  history  of  English  ideals  no  less  than 
to  that  of  America.  And  Hampden,  Pym,  Cromwell,  Milton, 
Bunyan,  and  the  Seven  Bishops  who  defied  the  second  James, 
were  but  brothers  to  our  English  sires  in  New  England.  Brothers 
of  the  same  blood  and  ultimate  ideal  were  also  the  royalists  of 
Virginia.  Then*  conservatism  and  devotion  to  a  lost  cause  ren- 
dered them  none  the  less  certain  "in  the  free  air  of  the  New  World 
to  develop  into  uncompromising  democrats  and  fierce  defenders 
of  their  own  privileges." 

Of  all  these  Englishmen  of  the  seventeenth  century,  whether 
of  the  Old  World  or  the  New,  there  was  a  heritage  hi  common. 

iFrom  Shakspere  and  the  Founders  of  Liberty  in  America  (copyright,  1917;  Tht 
Macmillan  Company).  Reprinted  by  permission. 

IS* 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  153 

One  language  welded  of  the  Old  English,  Scandinavian,  Gallic, 
and  Latin:  manly,  direct,  sober,  and  natively  consistent;  unfet- 
tered, experimental,  acquisitive;  from  emergency  to  emergency 
shaped  according  to  the  need,  incomparable  in  riches  ever  cumu- 
lative. One  race,  one  nation,  one  blood  infused  of  many  strains 
and  diverse  characteristics:  of  the  Anglo-Saxon,  the  personal 
independence  and  native  conservatism;  of  the  Norman,  the 
martial  genius,  equity,  political  vision,  masterful  and  unifying 
authority — and  of  the  Norman,  the  chivalry,  the  romance  and 
culture,  too;  of  the  Celt,  intermingling  with  these  in  the  cen- 
turies that  flowed  into  Shakspere,  a  current  of  aspiration, 
poignant  passion,  poetic  imagination — stirring  the  blood  but 
not  intoxicating  the  Anglo-Norman  reason.  One  custom,  of 
spiritual  ideal  but  of  tried  experience — practical  rather  than 
speculative,  distrustful  of  veering  sentiment,  slowly  crystalliz- 
ing into  the  stability  of  a  national  consciousness:  a  custom  of 
individual  prerogative  and  of  obedience  to  the  authority  that 
conserves  the  prerogative;  of  fair  play  and  equality  of  oppor- 
tunity, of  fearless  speech  for  the  right,  and  simple  for  the  com- 
mon weal;  a  custom  making  for  popular  sovereignty,  for  alle- 
giance, for  national  honor  in  national  fair  dealing,  for  the  might 
that  is  right;  one  custom,  mother  of  the  law.  One  common  law: 
the  progressive  expression  "of  a  free  people's  needs  and  standards 
of  justice;"  the  outgrowth  of  social  conditions,  deriving  its 
authority  not  from  enactment  of  sovereign  monarch  or  sovereign 
legislature  but  from  the  aggregate  social  will — the  law  of  prece- 
dent and  of  the  righteous  independence  of  the  courts. 

Long  before  Magna  Charta  features  of  this  law,  this  conser- 
vatively expanding  charter  of  liberties  and  duties,  are  distin- 
guishable in  the  procedure  of  our  forefathers  in  England.  From 
the  days  of  Ethelbert  to  those  of  Alfred,  and  from  Alfred  to 
Edward  the  Confessor,  for  four  and  a  half  centuries  before  the 
Conquest,  this  law,  hardly  if  at  all  affected  by  foreign  corpus  or 
code,  had  been  "gathering  itself  together  out  of  the  custom  of" 
the  independently  developing  Anglo-Saxon.  This  sanction  "the 
Conqueror,  who  claimed  the  crown  by  virtue  of  English  law  and 
professed  to  rule  by  English  law,"  repeatedly  bound  himself  to 


154  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

observe,  "and  he  handed  down  the  tradition  to  all  who  came 
after  him."  This  law  of  national  precedent,  further  developed 
under  Henry  II  and  systematically  expounded  by  Glanvil,  or 
by  some  clerk  under  his  direction,  grew  into  the  Great  Charter 
of  King  John  with  its  equal  distribution  of  civil  rights  to  all 
classes  of  freemen,  and  its  restriction  of  monarchical  preroga- 
tive. "The  king,"  writes  Bracton  in  the  days  of  John's  successor, 
Henry  III,  "must  not  be  subject  to  any  man  but  to  God  and  the 
law;  for  the  law  makes  him  king.  Let  the  king  therefore  give  to 
the  law  what  the  law  gives  to  him,  dominion  and  power;  for  there 
is  no  king  where  will,  and  not  law,  bears  rule."  The  relation  of 
this  English  law  of  custom  to  the  general  nature  of  law  as  set 
forth  in  the  civil  code  of  the  Roman  system,  Bracton  expounds; 
but  from  that  system  the  peculiar  English  law  is  not  derived. 
Expanding  through  Fortescue  and  Littleton,  this  English  law 
is  the  common  law  of  Coke;  and  by  the  Virginia  charter  of  1606, 
probably  drafted  by  Coke,  the  rights  of  the  common  law  were 
conferred  upon  the  colonists  of  the  New  World. 

For  these  Englishmen  of  the  "sceptered  isle"  and  of  the  un- 
tilled  wilderness  of  the  West  there  had  been  one  spirit  energizing 
toward  freedom — civil  and  religious;  one  charter  of  rights  and 
obligations.  Of  political  development  there  had  been  a  continuous 
history  for  eleven  hundred  years  before  England  was  planted  in 
America.  There  had  also  been  one  literature,  as  ancient  and  as 
noble,  stirring  in  embers  of  racial  tradition — a  tradition  of  ser- 
vice and  heroism  and  generous  acceptance  of  fate;  kindling 
to  mirth  and  pity,  humanity  and  reverence;  leaping  to  flame  in 
imagination  and  power;  and,  in  the  decades  when  first  the  Eng- 
lish peopled  "worlds  in  the  yet  unformed  Occident,"  attaining 
full  glory  in  the  zenith  of  Shakspere. 

Not  with  those  eleven  hundred  years  ceased  the  oneness  of 
the  English  heritage.  For  a  period  longer  than  that  which  has 
elapsed  since  the  American  branch  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  has 
been  a  separate  nation,  the  heritage  was  one.  One  hundred  and 
forty  years  have  succeeded  our  Declaration  of  Independence. 
Through  the  hundred  and  seventy  which  preceded,  the  history 
of  Britain  was  the  continuing  property  of  our  forefathers  of  Vir- 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  155 

ginia  and  New  England.  Not  only  Hampden  and  Cromwell 
and  the  Ironsides,  but  Chatham,  Holland,  Burke,  and  Sir  Philip 
Francis  were  compatriots  of  the  colonials.  The  admirals  of  the 
fleet,  Blake,  Vernon,  Anson,  Hawke,  were  our  admirals.  It  was 
for  the  nascent  empire  of  our  British  and  British- American  fore- 
fathers that  they  won  the  supremacy  of  the  sea.  The  victories 
of  Marlborough,  Clive's  conquest  of  India,  Wolfe's  conquest  of 
Canada — to  which  the  young  George  Washington  contributed 
the  services  of  his  still  British  sword — were  glories  not  of  a  for- 
eign race  but  of  our  race.  For  four  generations  we  have  been 
an  independent  people.  But  for  six  generations  before  that  the 
intellectual  and  spiritual  strivings  of  our  British  compatriots 
toward  truth  and  freedom  were  those  of  the  British  in  America. 
Harrington,  Algernon  Sidney,  Locke,  Hume,  and  Berkeley  were 
ours.  And  in  literature,  Milton  and  Bunyan,  Dryden  and  Pope, 
Swift,  Addison,  Gray  and  Goldsmith  were  our  poets  and  essay- 
ists. Such  was  the  birthright  of  our  British  forefathers  in  the 
American  colonies.  True  it  is  that  in  legal  procedure  they  pre- 
ferred, during  the  years  of  primitive  social  conditions,  the  appeal 
to  divine  law  and  the  law  of  reason  or  of  human  nature,  as  ex- 
pounded by  Hooker  and  his  school,  to  any  kind  of  law  positive; 
and  it  is  true  that,  within  the  field  of  positive  law,  they  took  more 
kindly  to  the  civil  which  derives  authority  from  enactment  than 
to  the  common  which  derives  from  precedent.  But  when  they 
reached  "the  stage  of  social  organization  which  the  common  law 
expressed,"  they  were  only  too  glad  to  claim  that  birthright  also, 
as  conveyed  by  various  early  charters.  And  upon  such  right  they 
based  their  appeal  for  civil  liberty. 

Not  at  all  with  1776  did  the  English  heritage  cease  to  be  the 
same  for  the  sons  of  England  at  home  and  over  the  seas.  In 
their  resistance  to  taxation  without  representation,  to  coercion 
by  force,  to  the  Acts  of  Trade,  the  colonists  in  America  were  sup- 
ported by  Fox  and  the  elder  Pitt,  by  Shelburne,  Camden,  Burke, 
Rockingham,  and  all  true  patriots  at  home.  Americans  were 
asserting  their  rights  as  Englishmen  under  charter  and  common 
law.  "Do  not  break  their  charter;  do  not  take  away  rights 
granted  them  by  the  predecessors  of  the  Crown!"  cried  members 


156  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

of  the  English  House  of  Commons.  Pitt  "pointed  out  distinctly 
that  the  Americans  were  upholding  those  eternal  principles  of 
political  justice  which  should  be  to  all  Englishmen  most  dear, 
and  that  a  victory  over  the  colonies  would  be  of  ill  omen  for 
English  liberty,  whether  in  the  Old  World  or  the  New."  Speak- 
ing of  the  tea-duty,  Lord  North  had  asseverated,  "I  will  never 
think  of  repealing  it  until  I  see  America  prostrate  at  my  feet." 
To  this  Colonel  Barre  retorted,  "Does  any  friend  of  his  country 
really  wish  to  see  America  thus  humbled?  In  such  a  situation 
she  would  serve  only  as  a  monument  of  your  arrogance  and  your 
folly.  For  my  part,  the  America  I  wish  to  see  is  America  in- 
creasing and  prosperous,  raising  her  head  in  graceful  dignity, 
with  freedom  and  firmness  asserting  her  rights  at  your  bar,  vin- 
dicating her  liberties,  pleading  her  services,  and  conscious  of 
her  merit.  This  is  the  America  that  will  have  spirit  to  fight  your 
battles,  to  sustain  you  when  hard  pushed  by  some  prevailing 
foe.  .  .  .  Unless  you  repeal  this  law  you  run  the  risk  of  losing 
America."  In  the  House  of  Lords,  three  devoted  defenders  of 
American  liberty  were  the  Dukes  of  Portland,  Devonshire,  and 
Northumberland.  They  were  descended  from  Henry  Wriothes- 
ley,  third  Earl  of  Southampton,  the  founder,  with  Sir  Edwin 
Sandys,  of  the  charter  liberties  of  Virginia.  In  that  House, 
protesting  against  the  "Intolerable  Acts"  of  1774,  the  Duke  of 
Richmond  thundered,  "I  wish  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart  that 
the  Americans  may  resist,  and  get  the  better  of  the  forces  sent 
against  them."  Not  the  historical  precedent  of  England  nor  the 
political  wisdom  of  her  best  "arrayed  her  in  hostility  to  every 
principle  of  public  justice  which  Englishmen  had  from  time  im- 
memorial held  sacred,"  but  the  perversity  of  an  un-English 
prince  and  of  his  fatuous  advisers.  Bent  upon  thwarting  the 
policy  of  reformers  who  would  make  the  Commons  more  truly 
representative  of  the  English  people,  upon  destroying  the  system 
of  cabinet  government  and  resuscitating  the  theory  of  divine 
right,  these  unfortunates  picked  their  quarrel  with  the  American 
colonies.  "For,"  as  John  Fiske  shrewdly  remarks,  "if  the  Am- 
erican position,  that  there  should  be  no  taxation  without  repre- 
sentation, were  once  granted,  then  it  would  straightway  become 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  157 

necessary  to  admit  the  principles  of  Parliamentary  reform,"  and 
to  call  the  Liberals  to  power  in  England.  A  representation  of  the 
colonies  hi  Westminster,  though  favored  by  some  great  English- 
men, might  have  been  impracticable;  but  if  George  III  had  lis- 
tened to  the  elder  Pitt  and  his  followers,  he  would  have  recog- 
nized the  right  of  American  freemen  to  levy  their  own  taxes,  and 
the  Revolution  would  have  been  obviated.  The  would-be  auto- 
crat forced  the  issue  in  America  and  was  defeated.  If  there  had 
been  no  revolution  in  America  there  would  have  been  a  revolu- 
tion hi  England,  and  the  monarch  would  in  all  probability  have 
been  dethroned.  The  War  of  Independence  reasserted  for  Eng- 
land as  well  as  for  America  the  political  rights  for  which  Eng- 
lishmen, from  the  tune  of  King  John  to  that  of  James  I,  from 
the  time  of  Hooker,  Shakspere,  Sandys,  Bradford,  Winthrop, 
Sir  Thomas  Dale,  and  Sir  Francis  Wyatt,  to  that  of  Cromwell, 
had  contended.  It  confirmed  the  victories  of  the  Great  Rebellion 
and  of  the  Revolution  of  1688.  The  younger  Pitt  denounced 
the  war  against  the  American  colonies  as  "most  accursed,  wicked, 
barbarous,  cruel,  unnatural,  unjust,  and  diabolical."  And  when 
Charles  Fox  heard  that  Cornwallis  had  surrendered  at  Yorktown, 
he  leaped  from  his  chair  and  clapped  his  hands.  The  victory  at 
Yorktown  dissipated  once  for  all  the  fatal  delusion  of  divine 
prerogative.  Those  who  conceived  and  carried  through  the 
American  Revolution  were  Anglo-Saxons:  Otis,  Samuel  and  John 
Adams,  Hancock,  Henry,  Richard  Henry  Lee,  Franklin,  Jeffer- 
son, Washington.  The  greatest  of  Americans  was  the  greatest 
Englishman  of  his  age:  Washington  was  but  asserting  against 
a  despotic  sovereign  of  German  blood  and  broken  English  speech 
the  prerogative  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  breed,  the  faith  of  his  liberal 
brothers  in  England. 

Political  history  has,  indeed,  worn  its  independent  channel; 
but  spirit  and  speech,  letters,  order  of  freedom  and  control  in 
the  America  of  today  are  of  the  ancient  blood  and  custom. 


iS8  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE   IN  THE 
LIGHT  OF  MODERN  CRITICISM1 

MOSES  COIT  TYLER 

[Moses  Colt  Tyler  (1835-1900)  was  a  distinguished  American  educator 
and  scholar  in  literature  and  history.  After  graduating  from  Yale  in  1877, 
he  became  a  Congregational  minister,  but  his  health  failing  from  overstudy, 
he  spent  four  years  hi  England  recuperating.  On  his  return  to  America,  he 
accepted,  in  1867,  the  chair  of  English  literature  at  the  University  of  Mich- 
igan. In  1881  he  was  called  to  the  professorship  of  American  history  at 
Cornell,  a  position  which  he  held  until  his  death.  His  literary  histories 
dealing  with  the  Colonial  and  the  Revolutionary  periods  of  American  litera- 
ture have  secured  for  him  a  wide  reputation  for  scholarship.  In  a  time  when 
it  has  become  fashionable  to  sneer  at  certain  features  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  it  is  well  for  every  American  to  follow  Tyler's  admirable  dis- 
cussion of  the  criticisms  to  which  this  great  document  has  been  subjected. 
As  limitations  of  space  hi  this  volume  have  made  it  necessary  to  abridge 
Tyler's  article,  the  student  should  if  possible  secure  it  hi  its  entirety  and 
carefully  read  it.] 

It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  some  hindrance  to  a  right 
estimate  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  is  occasioned  by 
either  of  two  opposite  conditions  of  mind,  both  of  which  are 
often  to  be  met  with  among  us:  on  the  one  hand,  a  condition 
of  hereditary,  uncritical  awe  and  worship  of  the  American  Revo- 
lution, and  of  that  state  paper  as  its  absolutely  perfect  and  glori- 
ous expression;  on  the  other  hand,  a  later  condition  of  cultivated 
distrust  of  the  Deckration,  as  a  piece  of  writing  lifted  up  into 
inordinate  renown  by  the  passionate  and  heroic  circumstances  of 
its  origin,  and  ever  since  then  extolled  beyond  reason  by  the 
blind  energy  of  patriotic  enthusiasm.  Turning  from  the  former 
state  of  mind,  which  obviously  calls  for  no  further  comment,  we 
may  note,  as  a  partial  illustration  of  the  latter,  that  American 
confidence  in  the  supreme  intellectual  merit  of  this  all-famous 
document  received  a  serious  wound  some  forty  years  ago  from 
the  hand  of  Rufus  Choate,  when,  with  a  courage  greater  than 
would  now  be  required  for  such  an  act,  he  characterized  it  as 
made  up  of  "glittering  and  sounding  generalities  of  natural 

1From  North  American  Review,  vol.  clxiii,  p.  r  (July,  1896). 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  159 

right."  What  the  great  advocate  then  so  unhesitatingly  sug- 
gested, many  a  thoughtful  American  since  then  has  at  least  sus- 
pected— that  our  great  proclamation,  as  a  piece  of  political 
literature,  cannot  stand  the  test  of  modern  analysis;  that  it 
belongs  to  the  immense  class  of  over-praised  productions;  that 
it  is,  in  fact,  a  stately  patchwork  of  sweeping  propositions  of 
somewhat  doubtful  validity;  that  it  has  long  imposed  upon  man- 
kind by  the  well-known  effectiveness  of  verbal  glitter  and  sound; 
that,  at  the  best,  it  is  an  example  of  florid  political  declamation 
belonging  to  the  sophomoric  period  of  our  national  life,  a  period 
which,  as  we  flatter  ourselves,  we  have  now  outgrown. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  whatever  authority  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  has  acquired  in  the  world,  has  been 
due  to  no  lack  of  criticism,  either  at  the  tune  of  its  first  appear- 
ance, or  since  then;  a  fact  which  seems  to  tell  in  favor  of  its  es- 
sential worth  and  strength.  From  the  date  of  its  original  publica- 
tion down  to  the  present  moment,  it  has  been  attacked  again  and 
again,  either  in  anger,  or  in  contempt,  by  friends  as  well  as  by 
enemies  of  the  American  Revolution,  by  liberals  in  politics  as 
well  as  by  conservatives.  It  has  been  censured  for  its  substance, 
it  has  been  censured  for  its  form,  for  its  misstatements  of  fact, 
for  its  fallacies  in  reasoning,  for  its  audacious  novelties  and  para- 
doxes, for  its  total  lack  of  all  novelty,  for  its  repetition  of  old 
and  threadbare  statements,  even  for  its  downright  plagiarisms; 
finally,  for  its  grandiose  and  vaporing  style. 

Perhaps,  however,  the  most  frequent  form  of  disparagement 
to  which  Jefferson's  great  state  paper  has  been  subjected  among 
us  is  that  which  would  minimize  his  merit  in  composing  it,  by 
denying  to  it  the  merit  of  originality.  .  .  . 

By  no  one,  however,  has  the  charge  of  a  lack  of  originality 
been  pressed  with  so  much  decisiveness  as  by  John  Adams,  who 
took  evident  pleasure  in  speaking  of  it  as  a  document  in  which 
were  merely  "recapitulated"  previous  and  well-known  state- 
ments of  American  rights  and  wrongs,  and  who,  as  late  as  in  the 
year  1822,  deliberately  wrote: 

"There  is  not  an  idea  in  it  but  what  had  been  hackneyed  in  Congress 
for  two  years  before.  The  substance  of  it  is  contained  in  the  declaration  of 


160  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

rights  and  the  violation  of  those  rights,  in  the  Journals  of  Congress,  in 
1774.  Indeed,  the  essence  of  it  is  contained  in  a  pamphlet,  voted  and 
printed  by  the  town  of  Boston,  before  the  first  Congress  met,  composed  by 
James  Otis,  as  I  suppose,  in  one  of  his  lucid  intervals,  and  pruned  and  pol- 
ished by  Samuel  Adams." 

Perhaps  nowhere  in  our  literature  would  it  be  possible  to  find 
a  criticism  brought  forward  by  a  really  able  man  against  any 
piece  of  writing  less  applicable  to  the  case,  and  of  less  force  and 
value,  than  is  this  particular  criticism  by  John  Adams  and  others, 
as  to  the  lack  of  originality  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence. 
Indeed,  for  such  a  paper  as  Jefferson  was  commissioned  to  write, 
the  one  quality  which  it  could  not  properly  have  had,  the  one 
quality  which  would  have  been  fatal  to  its  acceptance  either  by 
the  American  Congress  or  by  the  American  people — is  origi- 
nality. They  were  then  at  the  culmination  of  a  tremendous  con- 
troversy over  alleged  grievances  of  the  most  serious  kind — a 
controversy  that  had  been  steadily  raging  for  at  least  twelve 
years.  In  the  course  of  that  long  dispute,  every  phase  of  it, 
whether  as  to  abstract  right  or  constitutional  privilege  or  per- 
sonal procedure,  had  been  presented  in  almost  every  conceivable 
form  of  speech.  At  last,  they  had  resolved,  in  view  of  all  this 
experience,  no  longer  to  prosecute  the  controversy  as  members  of 
the  empire;  they  had  resolved  to  revolt,  and,  casting  off  forever 
then-  ancient  fealty  to  the  British  crown,  to  separate  from  the 
empire,  and  to  establish  themselves  as  a  new  nation  among  the 
nations  of  the  earth.  In  this  emergency,  as  it  happened,  Jeffer- 
son was  called  upon  to  put  into  form  a  suitable  statement  of  the 
chief  considerations  which  prompted  them  to  this  great  act  of 
revolution,  and  which,  as  they  believed,  justified  it.  What,  then, 
was  Jefferson  to  do?  Was  he  to  regard  himself  as  a  mere  literary 
essayist,  set  to  produce  before  the  world  a  sort  of  prize-disserta- 
tion— a  calm,  analytic,  judicial  treatise  on  history  and  politics 
with  a  particular  application  to  Anglo-American  affairs — one 
essential  merit  of  which  would  be  its  originality  as  a  contribu- 
tion to  historical  and  political  literature?  Was  he  not,  rather,  to 
regard  himself  as,  for  the  tune  being,  the  very  mouthpiece  and 
prophet  of  the  people  whom  he  represented,  and  as  such  re- 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  161 

quired  to  bring  together  and  to  set  in  order,  in  their  name,  not 
what  was  new,  but  what  was  old;  to  gather  up  into  his  own  soul, 
as  much  as  possible,  whatever  was  then  also  in  their  souls,  their 
very  thoughts  and  passions,  their  ideas  of  constitutional  law,  their 
interpretations  of  fact,  their  opinions  as  to  men  and  as  to  events 
in  all  that  ugly  quarrel,  their  notions  of  justice,  of  civic  dignity, 
of  human  rights;  finally,  their  memories  of  wrongs  which  seemed 
to  them  intolerable,  especially  of  wrongs  inflicted  upon  them 
during  those  twelve  years  by  the  hands  of  insolent  and  brutal 
men,  in  the  name  of  the  King,  and  by  his  apparent  command? 
Moreover,  as  the  nature  of  the  task  laid  upon  him  made  it 
necessary  that  he  should  thus  state,  as  the  reasons  for  their  in- 
tended act,  those  very  considerations  both  as  to  fact  and  as  to 
opinion  which  had  actually  operated  upon  their  minds,  so  did  it 
require  him  to  do  so,  to  some  extent,  in  the  very  language  which 
the  people  themselves,  in  their  more  formal  and  deliberate  utter- 
ances, had  all  along  been  using.  In  the  development  of  political 
life  in  England  and  America,  there  had  already  been  created  a 
vast  literature  of  constitutional  progress — a  literature  common 
to  both  portions  of  the  English  race,  pervaded  by  its  own  stately 
traditions,  and  reverberating  certain  great  phrases  which  formed, 
as  one  may  say,  almost  the  vernacular  of  English  justice,  and  of 
English  aspiration  for  a  free,  manly  and  orderly  political  life. 
In  this  vernacular  the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  written. 
The  phraseology  thus  characteristic  of  it  is  the  very  phraseology 
of  the  champions  of  constitutional  expansion,  of  civic  dignity 
and  progress,  within  the  English  race  ever  since  Magna  Charta; 
of  the  great  state  papers  of  English  freedom  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  particularly  the  Petition  of  Right  in  1629,  and  the  Bill 
of  Rights  in  1789;  of  the  great  English  Charters  for  colonization 
in  America ;  of  the  great  English  exponents  of  legal  and  political 
progress — Sir  Edward  Coke,  John  Milton,  Sir  Philip  Sidney, 
John  Locke;  finally,  of  the  great  American  exponents  of  political 
liberty,  and  of  the  chief  representative  bodies,  whether  local  or 
general,  which  had  convened  in  America  from  the  time  of  Stamp 
Act  Congress  until  that  of  the  Congress  which  resolved  upon  our 
independence.  To  say,  therefore,  that  the  official  declaration  of 


i6a  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

that  resolve  is  a  paper  made  up  of  the  very  opinions,  beliefs,  un- 
beliefs, the  very  sentiments,  prejudices,  passions,  even  the  errors 
in  judgment  and  the  personal  misconstructions — if  they  were 
such — which  then  actually  impelled  the  American  people  to  that 
mighty  act,  and  that  all  these  are  expressed  in  the  very  phrases 
which  they  had  been  accustomed  to  use,  is  to  pay  to  that  state- 
paper  the  highest  tribute  as  to  its  fitness  for  the  purpose  for 
which  it  was  framed. 

Of  much  of  this,  also,  Jefferson  himself  seems  to  have  been 
conscious;  and  perhaps  never  does  he  rise  before  us  with  more 
dignity,  with  more  truth,  than  when,  late  in  his  lifetime,  hurt 
by  the  captious  and  jangling  words  of  disparagement  then  re- 
cently put  into  writing  by  his  old  comrade,  to  the  effect  that  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  "contains  no  new  ideas,  that  it  is 
a  commonplace  compilation,  its  sentences  hackneyed  hi  Congress 
for  two  years  before,  and  its  essence  contained  in  Otis's  pamph- 
let," Jefferson  quietly  remarked  that  perhaps  these  statements 
might  "all  be  true:  of  that  I  am  not  to  be  the  judge.  .  .  . 
Whether  I  had  gathered  my  ideas  from  reading  or  reflection,  I 
do  not  know.  I  know  only  that  I  turned  to  neither  book  nor 
pamphlet  while  writing  it.  I  did  not  consider  it  as  any  part  of 
my  charge  to  invent  new  ideas  altogether  and  to  offer  no  senti- 
ment which  had  ever  been  expressed  before." 

Before  passing  from  this  phase  of  the  subject,  however,  it 
should  be  added  that,  while  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
lacks  originality  in  the  sense  just  indicated,  in  another  and  per- 
haps in  a  higher  sense,  it  possesses  originality — it  is  individual- 
ized by  the  character  and  by  the  genius  of  its  author.  Jefferson 
gathered  up  the  thoughts  and  emotions  and  even  the  character- 
istic phrases  of  the  people  for  whom  he  wrote,  and  these  he  per- 
fectly incorporated  with  what  was  already  in  his  mind,  and  then 
to  the  music  of  his  own  keen,  rich,  passionate,  and  enkindling 
style,  he  mustered  them  into  that  stately  and  triumphant  pro- 
cession wherein,  as  some  of  us  still  think,  they  will  go  march- 
ing on  to  the  world's  end. 

There  were  then  in  Congress  several  other  men  who  could 
have  written  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  written  it 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  163 

well — notably  Franklin,  either  of  the  two  Adamses,  Richard 
Henry  Lee,  William  Livingston,  and,  best  of  all,  but  for  his  own 
opposition  to  the  measure,  John  Dickinson;  but  had  any  one  of 
these  other  men  written  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  while 
it  would  have  contained,  doubtless,  nearly  the  same  topics  and 
nearly  the  same  great  formulas  of  political  statement,  it  would 
yet  have  been  a  wholly  different  composition  from  this  of  Jeffer- 
son's. No  one  at  all  familiar  with  his  other  writings,  as  well  as 
with  the  writings  of  his  chief  contemporaries,  could  ever  have  a 
moment's  doubt,  even  if  the  fact  were  not  already  notorious, 
that  this  document  was  by  Jefferson.  He  put  into  it  something 
that  was  his  own,  and  that  no  one  else  could  have  put  there.  He 
put  himself  into  it — his  own  genius,  his  own  moral  force,  his 
faith  in  God,  his  faith  in  ideas,  his  love  of  innovation,  his  pas- 
sion for  progress,  his  invincible  enthusiasm,  his  intolerance  of 
prescription,  of  injustice,  of  cruelty;  his  sympathy,  his  clarity  of 
vision,  his  affluence  of  diction,  his  power  to  fling  out  great 
phrases  which  will  long  fire  and  cheer  tie  souls  of  men  struggling 
against  political  unrighteousness. 

And  herein  lies  its  essential  originality,  perhaps  the  most  pre- 
cious, and,  indeed,  almost  the  only,  originality  ever  attaching  to 
any  great  literary  product  that  is  representative  of  its  time.  He 
made  himself  no  improper  claim,  therefore,  when  he  directed 
that  upon  the  granite  obelisk  at  his  grave  should  be  carved  the 
words:  "Here  was  buried  Thomas  Jefferson,  author  of  the  Dec- 
laration of  Independence." 

If  the  Declaration  of  Independence  is  now  to  be  fairly  judged 
by  us,  it  must  be  judged  with  reference  to  what  it  was  intended 
to  be,  namely,  an  impassioned  manifesto  of  one  party,  and  that 
the  weaker  party,  in  a  violent  race-quarrel;  of  a  party  resolved, 
at  last,  upon  the  extremity  of  revolution,  and  already  menaced 
by  the  inconceivable  disaster  of  being  defeated  in  the  very  act 
of  armed  rebellion  against  the  mightiest  military  power  on  earth. 
This  manifesto,  then,  is  not  to  be  censured  because,  being  avow- 
edly a  statement  of  its  own  side  of  the  quarrel,  it  does  not  also 
contain  a  moderate  and  judicial  statement  of  the  opposite  side; 
or  because,  being  necessarily  partisan  in  method,  it  is  likewise 


164  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

both  partisan  and  vehement  in  tone;  or  because  it  bristles  with 
accusations  against  the  enemy  so  fierce  and  so  unqualified  as  now 
to  seem  in  some  respects  overdrawn;  or  because  it  resounds  with 
certain  great  aphorisms  about  the  natural  rights  of  man,  at 
which,  indeed,  political  science  cannot  now  smile,  except  to  its 
own  discomfiture  and  shame — aphorisms  which  are  likely  to 
abide  hi  this  world  as  the  chief  source  and  inspiration  of  heroic 
enterprises  among  men  for  self-deliverance  from  oppression. 

Thus,  ever  since  its  first  announcement  to  the  world,  and 
down  almost  to  the  present  moment,  has  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  been  tested  by  criticism  of  every  possible  kind — 
by  criticism  intended  and  expected  to  be  destructive.  Appar- 
ently, however,  all  this  criticism  has  failed  to  accomplish  its 
object. 

It  is  proper  for  us  to  remember,  also,  that  what  we  call  criti- 
cism is  not  the  only  valid  test  of  the  genuineness  and  worth  of 
any  piece  of  writing  of  great  practical  interest  to  mankind: 
there  is,  in  addition,  the  test  of  actual  use  and  service,  in  direct 
contact  with  the  common  sense  and  the  moral  sense  of  large 
masses  of  men,  under  various  conditions,  and  for  a  long  period. 
Probably  no  writing  which  is  not  essentially  sound  and  true  has 
ever  survived  this  test. 

Neither  from  this  test  has  the  great  Declaration  any  need  to 
shrink.  As  to  the  immediate  use  for  which  it  was  sent  forth — 
that  of  rallying  and  uniting  the  friends  of  the  Revolution,  and 
bracing  them  for  their  great  task — its  effectiveness  was  so  great 
and  so  obvious  that  it  has  never  been  denied.  During  the  cen- 
tury and  a  quarter  since  the  Revolution,  its  influence  on  the 
political  character  and  the  political  conduct  of  the  American 
people  has  been  great  beyond  calculation.  For  example,  after 
we  had  achieved  our  own  national  deliverance,  and  had  advanced 
into  that  enormous  and  somewhat  corrupting  material  prosperity 
which  followed  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  and  the  develop- 
ment of  the  cotton-interest  and  the  expansion  of  the  Republic 
into  a  trans-continental  power,  we  fell  under  an  appalling  temp- 
tation— the  temptation  to  forget,  or  to  repudiate,  or  to  refuse  to 
apply  to  the  case  of  our  human  brethren  in  bondage,  the 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  165 

principles  which  we  had  once  proclaimed  as  the  basis  of  every 
rightful  government.  The  prodigious  service  rendered  to  us  in 
this  awful  moral  emergency  by  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
was,  that  its  public  repetition,  at  least  once  every  year,  in  the 
hearing  of  vast  throngs  of  the  American  people  in  every  portion 
of  the  Republic,  kept  constantly  before  our  minds,  in  a  form  of 
almost  religious  sanctity,  those  few  great  ideas  as  to  the  dignity 
of  human  nature,  and  the  sacredness  of  personality,  and  the 
indestructible  rights  of  man  as  mere  man,  with  which  we  had  so 
gloriously  identified  the  beginnings  of  our  national  existence. 
It  did  at  last  become  very  hard  for  us  to  listen  each  year  to  the 
preamble  of  the  Declaration  and  still  to  remain  the  owners  and 
users  and  catchers  of  slaves;  still  harder,  to  accept  the  doctrine 
that  the  righteousness  and  prosperity  of  slavery  was  to  be  ac- 
cepted as  the  dominant  policy  of  the  nation.  The  logic  of  Cal- 
houn  was  as  flawless  as  usual,  when  he  concluded  that  the  chief 
obstruction  in  the  way  of  his  system  was  the  preamble  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  Had  it  not  been  for  the  inviolable 
sacredness  given  by  it  to  those  sweeping  aphorisms  about  the 
natural  rights  of  man,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  Calhoun  might 
not  have  won  over  an  immense  majority  of  the  American  people 
to  the  support  of  his  compact  and  plausible  scheme  for  making 
slavery  the  basis  of  the  Republic.  It  was  the  preamble  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  which  elected  Lincoln,  which  sent 
forth  the  Emancipation  Proclamation,  which  gave  victory  to 
Grant,  which  ratified  the  Thirteenth  Amendment. 

We  shall  not  here  attempt  to  delineate  the  influence  of  this 
state  paper  upon  mankind  in  general.  Of  course,  the  emergence 
of  the  American  Republic  as  an  imposing  world-power  is  a  phe- 
nomenon which  has  now  for  many  years  attracted  the  attention 
of  the  human  race.  Surely,  no  slight  effect  must  have  resulted 
from  the  fact  that,  among  all  civilized  peoples,  the  one  American 
document  best  known  is  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and 
that  thus  the  spectacle  of  so  vast  and  beneficent  a  political  suc- 
cess has  been  everywhere  associated  with  the  assertion  of  the 
natural  rights  of  man.  "The  doctrines  it  contained,"  says  Buckle, 
"were  not  merely  welcomed  by  a  majority  of  the  French  nation, 


166  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

but  even  the  government  itself  was  unable  to  withstand  the  gen- 
eral feeling."  "Its  effect  in  hastening  the  approach  of  the 
French  Revolution  .  .  .  was  indeed  most  remarkable."  Else- 
where, also,  in  many  lands,  among  many  peoples,  it  has  been 
cited  again  and  again  as  an  inspiration  to  political  courage,  as  a 
model  for  political  conduct1;  and  if,  as  the  brilliant  historian 
just  alluded  to  has  affirmed,  "that  noble  Declaration  .  .  . 
ought  to  be  hung  up  in  the  nursery  of  every  king,  and  blazoned 
on  the  porch  of  every  royal  palace,"  it  is  because  it  has  become 
the  classic  statement  of  political  truths  which  must  at  last  abolish 
kings  altogether,  or  else  teach  them  to  identify  their  existence 
with  the  dignity  and  happiness  of  human  nature. 


DEMOCRACY 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL 

[James  Russell  Lowell  (1819-1891)  added  to  his  fame  as  poet  and  essayist 
the  distinction  of  serving  as  American  ambassador  to  Spain,  1876-1880,  and 
to  Great  Britain,  1880-1885.  In  this  last  position  he  performed  a  particu- 
larly useful  service  in  interpreting  England  and  the  United  States  to  each 
other.  The  famous  address  on  Democracy,  of  which  only  the  most  signifi- 
cant part  is  here  printed,  was  delivered  on  the  occasion  of  his  assuming  the 
honorary  presidency  of  the  Birmingham  and  Midland  Institute,  England, 
October  6,  1884,  and  expresses  Lowell's  native  Americanism  and  optimistic 
faith  in  democracy  at  a  time  when  American  democracy  was  still  on  the 
defensive  in  European  eyes.  The  selection  gives  the  latter  part  of  the  address, 
the  somewhat  rambling  and  whimsical  beginning  being  omitted.] 

Few  people  take  the  trouble  of  trying  to  find  out  what 
democracy  really  is.  Yet  this  would  be  a  great  help,  for  it  is  our 
lawless  and  uncertain  thoughts,  it  is  the  indefmiteness  of  our 
impressions,  that  fill  darkness,  whether  mental  or  physical,  with 
specters  and  hobgoblins.  Democracy  is  nothing  more  than  an 
experiment  in  government,  more  likely  to  succeed  in  a  new  soil, 
but  likely  to  be  tried  in  all  soils,  which  must  stand  or  fall  on  its 
own  merits  as  others  have  done  before  it.  For  there  is  no  trick 

JThe  editor  of  the  latest  edition  of  The  Writings  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  vol.  i.,  Introd. 
xxv.,  does  not  shrink  from  calling  it  "the  paper  which  is  probably  the  best  known  that 
ever  came  from  the  pen  of  an  individual."  [Tyler's  note.] 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  167 

of  perpetual  motion  in  politics  any  more  than  in  mechanics. 
President  Lincoln  denned  democracy  to  be  "the  government  of 
the  people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people."  This  is  a  sufficiently 
compact  statement  of  it  as  a  political  arrangement.  Theodore 
Parker  said  that  "Democracy  meant  not  'I'm  as  good  as  you  are,' 
but  'You're  as  good  as  I  am.'  "  And  this  is  the  ethical  conception 
of  it,  necessary  as  a  complement  of  the  other;  a  conception  which, 
could  it  be  made  actual  and  practical,  would  easily  solve  all  the 
riddles  that  the  old  sphinx  of  political  and  social  economy  who 
sits  by  the  roadside  has  been  proposing  to  mankind  from  the 
beginning,  and  which  mankind  have  shown  such  a  singular 
talent  for  answering  wrongly.  In  this  sense  Christ  was  the  first 
true  democrat  that  ever  breathed,  as  the  old  dramatist  Dekker 
said  He  was  the  first  true  gentleman.  The  characters  may  be 
easily  doubled,  so  strong  is  the  likeness  between  them.  A  beauti- 
ful and  profound  parable  of  the  Persian  poet  Jellaladeen  tells 
us  that  "One  knocked  at  the  Beloved's  door,  and  a  voice  asked 
from  within,  'Who  is  there?'  and  he  answered,  'It  is  I.'  Then  the 
voice  said,  'This  house  will  not  hold  me  and  thee;'  and  the  door 
was  not  opened.  Then  went  the  lover  into  the  desert  and  fasted 
and  prayed  in  solitude,  and  after  a  year  he  returned  and  knocked 
again  at  the  door;  and  again  the  voice  asked,  'Who  is  there?' 
and  he  said,  'It  is  thyself;'  and  the  door  was  opened  to  him." 
But  that  is  idealism,  you  will  say,  and  this  is  an  only  too  practical 
world.  I  grant  it;  but  I  am  one  of  those  who  believe  that  the 
real  will  never  find  an  irremovable  basis  till  it  rests  on  the  ideal. 
It  used  to  be  thought  that  a  democracy  was  possible  only  in  a 
small  territory,  and  this  is  doubtless  true  of  a  democracy  strictly 
defined,  for  in  such  all  the  citizens  decide  directly  upon  every 
question  of  public  concern  in  a  general  assembly.  An  example 
still  survives  in  the  tiny  Swiss  canton  of  Appenzell.  But  this 
immediate  intervention  of  the  people  in  their  own  affairs  is  not  of 
the  essence  of  democracy;  it  is  not  necessary,  nor,  indeed,  in  most 
cases,  practicable.  Democracies  to  which  Mr.  Lincoln's  defini- 
tion would  fairly  enough  apply  have  existed,  and  now  exist,  in 
which,  though  the  supreme  authority  reside  in  the  people,  yet 
they  can  act  only  indirectly  on  the  national  policy.  This  genera- 


i68  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

tion  has  seen  a  democracy  with  an  imperial  figurehead,  and  in  all 
that  have  ever  existed  the  body  politic  has  never  embraced  all 
the  inhabitants  included  within  its  territory,  the  right  to  share 
in  the  direction  of  affairs  has  been  confined  to  citizens,  and 
citizenship  has  been  further  restricted  by  various  limitations, 
sometimes  of  property,  sometimes  of  nativity,  and  always  of  age 
and  sex. 

The  framers  of  the  American  Constitution  were  far  from  wish- 
ing or  intending  to  found  a  democracy  in  the  strict  sense  of  the 
word,  though,  as  was  inevitable,  every  expansion  of  the  scheme 
of  government  they  elaborated  has  been  in  a  democratical  direc- 
tion. But  this  has  been  generally  the  slow  result  of  growth, 
and  not  the  sudden  innovation  of  theory;  in  fact,  they  had  a 
profound  disbelief  in  theory,  and  knew  better  than  to  commit 
the  folly  of  breaking  with  the  past.  They  were  not  seduced  by 
the  French  fallacy  that  a  new  system  of  government  could  be 
ordered  like  a  new  suit  of  clothes.  They  would  as  soon  have 
thought  of  ordering  a  new  suit  of  flesh  and  skin.  It  is  only  on  the 
roaring  loom  of  time  that  the  stuff  is  woven  for  such  a  vesture  of 
their  thought  and  experience  as  they  were  meditating.  They 
recognized  fully  the  value  of  tradition  and  habit  as  the  great 
allies  of  permanence  and  stability.  They  all  had  that  distaste 
for  innovation  which  belonged  to  their  race,  and  many  of  them 
a  distrust  of  human  nature  derived  from  their  creed.  The  day  of 
sentiment  was  over,  and  no  dithyrambic  affirmations  or  fine- 
drawn analyses  of  the  Rights  of  Man  would  serve  their  present 
turn.  This  was  a  practical  question,  and  they  addressed  them- 
selves to  it  as  men  of  knowledge  and  judgment  should.  Their 
problem  was  how  to  adapt  English  principles  and  precedents  to 
the  new  conditions  of  American  life,  and  they  solved  it  with 
singular  discretion.  They  put  as  many  obstacles  as  they  could 
contrive,  not  in  the  way  of  the  people's  will,  but  of  their  whim. 
With  few  exceptions  they  probably  admitted  the  logic  of  the 
then  accepted  syllogism, — democracy,  anarchy,  despotism.  But 
this  formula  was  framed  upon  the  experience  of  small  cities  shut 
up  to  stew  within  their  narrow  walls  where  the  number  of  citizens 
made  but  an  inconsiderable  fraction  of  the  inhabitants,  where 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  169 

every  passion  was  reverberated  from  house  to  house  and  from 
man  to  man  with  gathering  rumor  till  every  impulse  became 
gregarious  and  therefore  inconsiderate,  and  every  popular 
assembly  needed  but  an  infusion  of  eloquent  sophistry  to  turn 
it  into  a  mob,  all  the  more  dangerous  because  sanctified  with  the 
formality  of  law. 

Fortunately  their  case  was  wholly  different.  They  were  to 
legislate  for  a  widely  scattered  population  and  for  States  already 
practiced  in  the  discipline  of  a  partial  independence.  They  had 
an  unequaled  opportunity  and  enormous  advantages.  The 
material  they  had  to  work  upon  was  already  democratical  by 
instinct  and  habitude.  It  was  tempered  to  their  hands  by  more 
than  a  century's  schooling  in  self-government.  They  had  but  to 
give  permanent  and  conservative  form  to  a  ductile  mass.  In 
giving  impulse  and  direction  to  their  new  institutions,  especially, 
in  supplying  them  with  checks  and  balances,  they  had  a  great 
help  and  safeguard  in  their  federal  organization.  The  different, 
sometimes  conflicting,  interests  and  social  systems  of  the  several 
States  made  existence  as  a  Union  and  coalescence  into  a  nation 
conditional  on  a  constant  practice  of  moderation  and  com- 
promise. The  very  elements  of  disintegration  were  the  best 
guides  in  political  training.  Their  children  learned  the  lesson  of 
compromise  only  too  well,  and  it  was  the  application  of  it  to  a 
question  of  fundamental  morals  that  cost  us  our  civil  war. 
We  learned  once  for  all  that  compromise  makes  a  good  umbrella 
but  a  poor  roof;  that  it  is  a  temporary  expedient,  often  wise  in 
party  politics,  almost  sure  to  be  unwise  in  statesmanship. 

Has  not  the  trial  of  democracy  in  America  proved,  on  the 
whole,  successful?  If  it  had  not,  would  the  Old  World  be  vexed 
with  any  fears  of  its  proving  contagious?  This  trial  would  have 
been  less  severe  could  it  have  been  made  with  a  people  homo- 
geneous in  race,  language,  and  traditions,  whereas  the  United 
States  have  been  called  on  to  absorb  and  assimilate  enormous 
masses  of  foreign  population" heterogeneous  in  all  these  respects, 
and  drawn  mainly  from  that  class  which  might  fairly  say  that 
the  world  was  not  their  friend,  nor  the  world's  law.  The  previous 
condition  too  often  justified  the  traditional  Irishman,  who, 


i;o  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

landing  in  New  York  and  asked  what  his  politics  were,  inquired 
if  there  was  a  Government  there,  and  on  being  told  that  there 
was,  retorted,  "Thin  I'm  agin  it!"  We  have  taken  from  Europe 
the  poorest,  the  most  ignorant,  the  most  turbulent  of  her  people 
and  have  made  them  over  into  good  citizens,  who  have  added  to 
our  wealth,  and  who  are  ready  to  die  in  defence  of  a  country  and 
of  institutions  which  they  know  to  be  worth  dying  for.  The 
exceptions  have  been  (and  they  are  lamentable  exceptions) 
where  these  hordes  of  ignorance  and  poverty  have  coagulated 
in  great  cities.  But  the  social  system  is  yet  to  seek  which  has 
not  to  look  the  same  terrible  wolf  in  the  eyes.  On  the  other  hand, 
at  this  very  moment  Irish  peasants  are  buying  up  the  worn-out 
farms  of  Massachusetts,  and  making  them  productive  again  by 
the  same  virtues  of  industry  and  thrift  that  once  made  them  prof- 
itable to  the  English  ancestors  of  the  men  who  are  deserting 
them.  To  have  achieved  even  these  prosaic  results  (if  you  choose 
to  call  them  so),  and  that  out  of  materials  the  most  discordant, 
— I  might  say  the  most  recalcitrant, — argues  a  certain  benefi- 
cent virtue  in  the  system  that  could  do  it,  and  is  not  to  be 
accounted  for  by  mere  luck.  Carlyle  said  scornfully  that 
America  meant  only  roast  turkey  every  day  for  everybody. 
He  forgot  that  States,  as  Bacon  said  of  wars,  go  on  their  bellies. 
As  for  the  security  of  property,  it  should  be  tolerably  well 
secured  in  a  country  where  every  other  man  hopes  to  be  rich, 
even  though  the  only  property  qualification  be  the  ownership 
of  two  hands  that  add  to  the  general  wealth.  Is  it  not  the  best 
security  for  anything  to  interest  the  largest  possible  number  of 
persons  in  its  preservation  and  the  smallest  in  its  division?  In 
point  of  fact,  far-seeing  men  count  the  increasing  power  of  wealth 
and  its  combinations  as  one  of  the  chief  dangers  with  which  the 
institutions  of  the  United  States  are  threatened  in  the  not  dis- 
tant future.  The  right  of  individual  property  is  no  doubt  the 
very  corner-stone  of  civilization  as  hitherto  understood,  but  I 
am  a  little  impatient  of  being  told  that  property  is  entitled  to 
exceptional  consideration  because  it  bears  all  the  burdens  of 
the  State.  It  bears  those,  indeed,  which  can  most  easily  be  borne, 
but  poverty  pays  with  its  person  the  chief  expenses  of  war, 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  171 

pestilence,  and  famine.  Wealth  should  not  forget  this,  for  poverty 
is  beginning  to  think  of  it  now  and  then.  Let  me  not  be  mis- 
understood. I  see  as  clearly  as  any  man  possibly  can,  and  rate 
as  highly,  the  value  of  wealth,  and  of  hereditary  wealth,  as  the 
security  of  refinement,  the  feeder  of  all  those  arts  that  ennoble 
and  beautify  life,  and  as  making  a  country  worth  living  in.  Many 
an  ancestral  hall  here  in  England  has  been  a  nursery  of  that 
culture  which  has  been  of  example  and  benefit  to  all.  Old  gold 
has  a  civilizing  virtue  which  new  gold  must  grow  old  to  be 
capable  of  secreting. 

I  should  not  think  of  coming  before  you  to  defend  or  to 
criticize  any  form  of  government.  All  have  their  virtues,  all 
their  defects,  and  all  have  illustrated  one  period  or  anpther  in 
the  history  of  the  race,  with  signal  services  to  humanity  and 
culture.  There  is  not  one  that  could  stand  a  cynical  cross- 
examination  by  an  experienced  criminal  lawyer,  except  that  of  a 
perfectly  wise  and  perfectly  good  despot,  such  as  the  world  has 
never  seen,  except  in  that  white-haired  king  of  Browning's 
who 

"Lived  long  ago 
In  the  morning  of  the  world, 
When  Earth  was  nearer  Heaven  than  now." 

The  English  race,  if  they  did  not  invent  government  by  dis- 
cussion, have  at  least  carried  it  nearest  to  perfection  in  practice. 
It  seems  a  very  safe  and  reasonable  contrivance  for  occupying 
the  attention  of  the  country,  and  is  certainly  a  better  way  of 
settling  questions  than  by  push  of  pike.  Yet,  if  one  should  ask 
it  why  it  should  not  rather  be  called  government  by  gabble, 
it  would  have  to  fumble  in  its  pocket  a  good  while  before  it 
found  the  change  for  a  convincing  reply.  As  matters  stand,  too, 
it  is  beginning  to  be  doubtful  whether  Parliament  and  Congress 
sit  at  Westminster  and  Washington  or  in  the  editors'  rooms  of 
the  leading  journals,  so  thoroughly  is  everything  debated  before 
the  authorized  and  responsible  debaters  get  on  their  legs.  And 
what  shall  we  say  of  government  by  a  majority  of  voices?  To 
a  person  who  in  the  last  century  would  have  called  himself  an 
Impartial  Observer,  a  numerical  preponderance  seems  on  the 


172  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

whole,  as  clumsy  a  way  of  arriving  at  truth  as  could  well  be 
devised,  but  experience  has  apparently  shown  it  to  be  a  conveni- 
ent arrangement  for  determining  what  may  be  expedient  or 
advisable  or  practicable  at  any  given  moment.  Truth,  after  all, 
wears  a  different  face  to  everybody,  and  it  would  be  too  tedious 
to  wait  till  ah1  were  agreed.  She  is  said  to  He  at  the  bottom  of  a 
well,  for  the  very  reason,  perhaps,  that  whoever  looks  down  in 
search  of  her  sees  his  own  image  at  the  bottom,  and  is  persuaded 
not  only  that  he  has  seen  the  goddess,  but  that  she  is  far  better 
looking  than  he  had  imagined. 

The  arguments  against  universal  suffrage  are  equally  un- 
answerable. "What,"  we  exclaim,  "shah1  Tom,  Dick  and  Harry 
have  as  much  weight  in  the  scale  as  I?"  Of  course,  nothing  could 
be  more  absurd.  And  yet  universal  suffrage  has  not  been  the 
instrument  of  greater  unwisdom  than  contrivances  of  a  more 
select  description.  Assemblies  could  be  mentioned  composed 
entirely  of  Masters  of  Arts  and  Doctors  in  Divinity  which  have 
sometimes  shown  traces  of  human  passion  or  prejudice  hi  their 
votes.  Have  the  Serene  Highnesses  and  Enlightened  Classes 
carried  on  the  business  of  Mankind  so  well,  then,  that  there  is 
no  use  in  trying  a  less  costly  method?  The  democratic  theory 
is  that  those  Constitutions  are  likely  to  prove  steadiest  which 
have  the  broadest  base,  that  the  right  to  vote  makes  a  safety- 
valve  of  every  voter,  and  that  the  best  way  of  teaching  a  man 
how  to  vote  is  to  give  him  the  chance  of  practice.  For  the  ques- 
tion is  no  longer  the  academic  one,  "Is  it  wise  to  give  every  man 
the  ballot?"  but  rather  the  practical  one,  "Is  it  prudent  to 
deprive  whole  classes  of  it  any  longer?"  It  may  be  conjectured 
that  it  is  cheaper  in  the  long  run  to  lif  t  men  up  than  to  hold  them 
down,  and  that  the  ballot  hi  then-  hands  is  less  dangerous  to 
society  than  a  sense  of  wrong  in  their  heads.  At  any  rate  this  is 
the  dilemma  to  which  the  drift  of  opinion  has  been  for  some  time 
sweeping  us,  and  in  politics  a  dilemma  is  a  more  unmanageable 
thing  to  hold  by  the  horns  than  a  wolf  by  the  ears.  It  is  said 
that  the  right  of  suffrage  is  not  valued  when  it  is  indiscriminately 
bestowed,  and  there  may  be  some  truth  in  this,  for  I  have 
observed  that  what  men  prize  most  is  a  privilege,  even  if  it  be 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  173 

that  of  chief  mourner  at  a  funeral.  But  is  there  not  danger  that 
it  will  be  valued  at  more  than  its  worth  if  denied,  and  that  some 
illegitimate  way  will  be  sought  to  make  up  for  the  want  of  it? 
Men  who  have  a  voice  in  public  affairs  are  at  once  affiliated  with 
one  or  other  of  the  great  parties  between  which  society  is  divided, 
merge  their  individual  hopes  and  opinions  in  its  safer,  because 
more  generalized,  hopes  and  opinions,  are  disciplined  by  its 
tactics,  and  acquire,  to  a  certain  degree,  the  orderly  qualities 
of  an  army.  They  no  longer  belong  to  a  class,  but  to  a  body  cor- 
porate. Of  one  thing,  at  least,  we  may  be  certain,  that,  under 
whatever  method  of  helping  things  to  go  wrong  man's  wit  can 
contrive,  those  who  have  the  divine  right  to  govern  will  be  found 
to  govern  in  the  end,  and  that  the  highest  privilege  to  which  the 
majority  of  mankind  can  aspire  is  that  of  being  governed  by 
those  wiser  than  they.  Universal  suffrage  has  in  the  United 
States  sometimes  been  made  the  instrument  of  inconsiderate 
changes,  under  the  notion  of  reform,  and  this  from  a  misconcep- 
tion of  the  true  meaning  of  popular  government.  One  of  these 
has  been  the  substitution  in  many  of  the  states  of  popular 
election  for  official  selection  in  the  choice  of  judges.  The  same 
system  applied  to  military  officers  was  the  source  of  much  evil 
during  our  civil  war,  and,  I  believe,  had  to  be  abandoned.  But 
it  has  been  also  true  that  on  all  great  questions  of  national  policy 
a  reserve  of  prudence  and  discretion  has  been  brought  out  at 
the  critical  moment  to  turn  the  scale  in  favor  of  a  wiser  decision. 
An  appeal  to  the  reason  of  the  people  has  never  been  known  to 
fail  in  the  long  run.  It  is,  perhaps,  true  that,  by  effacing  the 
principle  of  passive  obedience,  democracy,  ill  understood,  has 
slackened  the  spring  of  that  ductility  to  discipline  which  is 
essential  to  "the  unity  and  married  calm  of  States."  But  I 
feel  assured  that  experience  and  necessity  will  cure  this  evil, 
as  they  have  shown  their  power  to  cure  others.  And  under  what 
frame  of  policy  have  evils  ever  been  remedied  till  they  became 
intolerable,  and  shook  men  out  of  their  indolent  indifference 
through  their  fears? 

We  are  told  that  the  inevitable  result  of  democracy  is  to  sap 
the  foundations  of  personal  independence,  to  weaken  the  prin- 


174  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

ciple  of  authority,  to  lessen  the  respect  due  to  eminence,  whether 
in  station,  virtue,  or  genius.  If  these  things  were  so,  society 
could  not  hold  together.  Perhaps  the  best  forcing-house  of 
robust  individuality  would  be  where  public  opinion  is  inclined 
to  be  most  overbearing,  as  he  must  be  of  heroic  temper  who 
should  walk  along  Piccadilly  at  the  height  of  the  season  in  a 
soft  hat.  As  for  authority,  it  is  one  of  the  symptoms  of  the  time 
that  the  religious  reverence  for  it  is  declining  everywhere,  but 
this  is  due  partly  to  the  fact  that  statecraft  is  no  longer  looked 
upon  as  a  mystery,  but  as  a  business,  and  partly  to  the  decay 
of  superstition,  by  which  I  mean  the  habit  of  respecting  what 
we  are  told  to  respect  rather  than  what  is  respectable  in  itself. 
There  is  more  rough  and  tumble  in  the  American  democracy 
than  is  altogether  agreeable  to  people  of  sensitive  nerves  and 
refined  habits,  and  the  people  take  their  political  duties  lightly 
and  laughingly,  as  is,  perhaps,  neither  unnatural  nor  unbecom- 
ing in  a  young  giant.  Democracies  can  no  more  jump  away  from 
their  own  shadows  than  the  rest  of  us  can.  They  no  doubt 
sometimes  make  mistakes  and  pay  honor  to  men  who  do  not 
deserve  it.  But  they  do  this  because  they  believe  them  worthy 
of  it,  and  though  it  be  true  that  the  idol  is  the  measure  of  the 
worshipper,  yet  the  worship  has  in  it  the  germ  of  a  nobler  religion. 
But  is  it  democracies  alone  that  fall  into  these  errors?  I,  who 
have  seen  it  proposed  to  erect  a  statue  to  Hudson,  the  railway 
king,  and  have  heard  Louis  Napoleon  hailed  as  the  savior  of 
society  by  men  who  certainly  had  no  democratic  associations 
or  leanings,  am  not  ready  to  think  so.  But  democracies  have 
likewise  their  finer  instincts.  I  have  also  seen  the  wisest  states- 
man and  most  pregnant  speaker  of  our  generation,  a  man  of 
humble  birth  and  ungainly  manners,  of  little  culture  beyond 
what  his  own  genius  supplied,  become  more  absolute  in  power 
than  any  monarch  of  modern  times  through  the  reverence  of  his 
countrymen  for  his  honesty,  his  wisdom,  his  sincerity,  his  faith 
in  God  and  man,  and  the  nobly  humane  simplicity  of  his  char- 
acter. And  I  remember  another  whom  popular  respect  en- 
veloped as  with  a  halo,  the  least  vulgar  of  men,  the  most  austerely 
genial,  and  the  most  independent  of  opinion.  Wherever  he  went 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  175 

he  never  met  a  stranger,  but  everywhere  neighbors  and  friends 
proud  of  him  as  their  ornament  and  decoration.  Institutions 
which  could  bear  and  breed  such  men  as  Lincoln  and  Emerson 
had  surely  some  energy  for  good.  No,  amid  all  the  fruitless  tur- 
moil and  miscarriage  of  the  world,  if  there  be  one  thing  steadfast 
and  of  favorable  omen,  one  thing  to  make  optimism  distrust  its 
own  obscure  distrust,  it  is  the  rooted  instinct  in  men  to  admire 
what  is  better  and  more  beautiful  than  themselves.  The  touch- 
stone of  political  and  social  institutions  is  their  ability  to  supply 
them  with  worthy  objects  of  this  sentiment,  which  is  the  very 
tap-root  of  civilization  and  progress.  There  would  seem  to  be 
no  readier  way  of  feeding  it  with  the  elements  of  growth  and 
vigor  than  such  an  organization  of  society  as  will  enable  men  to 
respect  themselves,  and  so  to  justify  them  in  respecting  others. 
Such  a  result  is  quite  possible  under  other  conditions  than 
those  of  an  avowedly  democratical  Constitution.  For  I  take  it 
that  the  real  essence  of  democracy  was  fairly  enough  defined  by 
the  First  Napoleon  when  he  said  that  the  French  Revolution 
meant  "la  carriere  ouverte  aux  talents" — a  clear  pathway  for 
merit  of  whatever  kind.  I  should  be  inclined  to  paraphrase  this 
by  calling  democracy  that  form  of  society,  no  matter  what  its 
political  classification,  hi  which  every  man  had  a  chance  and 
knew  that  he  had  it.  If  a  man  can  climb,  and  feels  himself 
encouraged  to  climb,  from  a  coalpit  to  the  highest  position  for 
which  he  is  fitted,  he  can  well  afford  to  be  indifferent  what 
name  is  given  to  the  government  under  which  he  lives.  The 
Bailli  of  Mirabeau,  uncle  of  the  more  famous  tribune  of  that 
name,  wrote  in  1771 :  "The  English  are,  in  my  opinion,  a  hundred 
times  more  agitated  and  more  unfortunate  than  the  very 
Algerines  themselves,  because  they  do  not  know  and  will  not 
know  till  the  destruction  of  their  overswollen  power,  which  I 
believe  very  near,  whether  they  are  monarchy,  aristocracy,  or 
democracy,  and  wish  to  play  the  part  of  all  three."  England  has 
not  been  obliging  enough  to  fulfill  the  Bailli's  prophecy,  and 
perhaps  it  was  this  very  carelessness  about  the  name,  and  con- 
cern about  the  substance  of  popular  government,  this  skill  in 
getting  the  best  out  of  things  as  they  are,  in  utilizing  all  the 


176  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

motives  which  influence  men,  and  in  giving  one  direction  to 
many  impulses,  that  has  been  a  principal  factor  of  her  greatness 
and  power.  Perhaps  it  is  fortunate  to  have  an  unwritten  con- 
stitution, for  men  are  prone  to  be  tinkering  the  work  of  their  own 
hands,  whereas  they  are  more  willing  to  let  time  and  circum- 
stance mend  or  moclify  what  time  and  circumstances  have  made. 
All  free  governments,  whatever  their  name,  are  in  reality  govern- 
ments by  public  opinion,  and  it  is  on  the  quality  of  this  public 
opinion  that  their  prosperity  depends.  It  is,  therefore,  their 
first  duty  to  purify  the  element  from  which  they  draw  the 
breath  of  life.  With  the  growth  of  democracy  grows  also  the 
fear,  if  not  the  danger,  that  this  atmosphere  may  be  corrupted 
with  poisonous  exhalations  from  lower  and  more  malarious 
levels,  and  the  question  of  sanitation  becomes  more  instant 
and  pressing.  Democracy  in  its  best  sense  is  merely  the  letting 
in  of  light  and  air.  Lord  Sherbrooke,  with  his  usual  epigrammatic 
terseness,  bids  you  educate  your  future  rulers.  But  would  this 
alone  be  a  sufficient  safeguard?  To  educate  the  intelligence  is  to 
enlarge  the  horizon  of  its  desires  and  wants.  And  it  is  well  that 
this  should  be  so.  But  the  enterprise  must  go  deeper  and  prepare 
the  way  for  satisfying  those  desires  and  wants  in  so  far  as  they 
are  legitimate.  What  is  really  ominous  of  danger  to  the  existing 
order  of  things  is  not  democracy  (which,  properly  understood,  is 
a  conservative  force),  but  the  Socialism,  which  may  find  a 
fulcrum  hi  it.  If  we  cannot  equalize  conditions  and  fortunes 
any  more  than  we  can  equalize  the  brains  of  men — and  a  very 
sagacious  person  has  said  that  "where  two  men  ride  of  a  horse 
one  must  ride  behind" — we  can  yet,  perhaps,  do  something  to 
correct  those  methods  and  influences  that  lead  to  enormous 
inequalities,  and  to  prevent  their  growing  more  enormous.  It 
is  all  very  well  to  pooh-pooh  Mr.  George  and  to  prove  him  mis- 
taken in  His  political  economy.  I  do  not  believe  that  land  should 
be  divided  because  the  quantity  of  it  is  limited  by  nature.  Of 
what  may  this  not  be  said?  A  fortiori,  we  might  on  the  same 
principle  insist  on  a  division  of  human  wit,  for  I  have  observed 
that  the  quantity  of  this  has  been  even  more  inconveniently 
limited.  Mr.  George  himself  has  an  inequitably  large  share  of  it. 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  177 

But  he  is  right  in  his  impelling  motive;  right  also,  I  am  convinced, 
in  insisting  that  humanity  makes  a  part,  by  far  the  most  impor- 
tant part,  of  political  economy;  and  in  thinking  man  to  be  of 
more  concern  and  more  convincing  than  the  longest  columns 
of  figures  in  the  world.  For  unless  you  include  human  nature  in 
your  addition,  your  total  is  sure  to  be  wrong  and  your  deductions 
from  it  fallacious.  Communism  means  barbarism,  but  Socialism 
means,  or  wishes  to  mean,  cooperation  and  community  of  in- 
terests, sympathy,  the  giving  to  the  hands  not  so  large  a  share 
as  to  the  brains,  but  a  krger  share  than  hitherto  in  the  wealth 
they  must  combine  to  produce — means,  in  short,  the  practical 
application  of  Christianity  to  life,  and  has  in  it  the  secret  of  an 
orderly  and  benign  reconstruction.  State  Socialism  would  cut 
off  the  very  roots  in  personal  character — self-help,  forethought, 
and  frugality — which  nourish  and  sustain  the  trunk  and  branches 
of  every  vigorous  Commonwealth. 

I  do  not  believe  in  violent  changes,  nor  do  I  expect  them. 
Things  in  possession  have  a  very  firm  grip.  One  of  the  strongest 
cements  of  society  is  the  conviction  of  mankind  that  the  state 
of  things  into  which  they  are  born  is  a  part  of  the  order  of  the 
universe,  as  natural,  let  us  say,  as  that  the  sun  should  go  around 
the  earth.  It  is  a  conviction  that  they  will  not  surrender  except 
on  compulsion,  and  a  wise  society  should  look  to  it  that  this 
compulsion  be  not  put  upon  them.  For  the  individual  man  there 
is  no  radical  cure,  outside  of  human  nature  itself,  for  the  evils 
to  which  human  nature  is  heir.  The  rule  will  always  hold  good 
that  you  must 

"Be  your  own  palace  or  the  world's  your  gaol." 

But  for  artificial  evils,  for  evils  that  spring  from  want  of  thought, 
thought  must  find  a  remedy  somewhere.  There  has  been  no 
period  of  time  in  which  wealth  has  been  more  sensible  of  its 
duties  than  now.  It  builds  hospitals,  it  establishes  missions 
among  the  poor,  it  endows  schools.  It  is  one  of  the  advantages 
of  accumulated  wealth,  and  of  the  leisure  it  renders  possible, 
that  people  have  time  to  think  of  the  wants  and  sorrows  of  their 
fellows.  But  all  these  remedies  are  partial  and  palliative  merely. 


i78  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

It  is  as  if  we  should  apply  plasters  to  a  single  pustule  of  the 
smallpox  with  a  view  of  driving  out  the  disease.  The  true  way 
is  to  discover  and  to  extirpate  the  germs.  As  society  is  now  con- 
stituted these  are  in  the  air  it  breathes,  in  the  water  it  drinks, 
in  things  that  seem,  and  which  it  has  always  believed,  to  be  the 
most  innocent  and  healthful.  The  evil  elements  it  neglects 
corrupt  these  in  their  springs  and  pollute  them  in  their  courses. 
Let  us  be  of  good  cheer,  however,  remembering  that  the  mis- 
fortunes hardest  to  bear  are  those  which  never  come.  The  world 
has  outlived  much,  and  will  outlive  a  great  deal  more,  and  men 
have  contrived  to  be  happy  in  it.  It  has  shown  the  strength  of 
its  constitution  in  nothing  more  than  in  surviving  the  quack 
medicines  it  has  tried.  In  the  scales  of  the  destinies  brawn  will 
never  weigh  so  much  as  brain.  Our  healing  is  not  in  the  storm 
or  in  the  whirlwind,  it  is  not  in  monarchies,  or  aristocracies,  or 
democracies,  but  will  be  revealed  by  the  still  small  voice  that 
speaks  to  the  conscience  and  the  heart,  prompting  us  to  a  wider 
and  wiser  humanity. 


THE  WORKING  OF  THE  AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY1 

CHARLES  WILLIAM  ELIOT 

[Charles  William  Eliot  (1834 )  has  been  for  a  great  many  years  one 

of  the  foremost  figures  in  American  education.  During  the  larger  part  of 
his  career  he  was  president  of  Harvard  University,  a  position  which  he  filled 
with  notable  distinction  until  his  voluntary  retirement  in  1909.  He  has  not 
only  written  and  spoken  much  on  educational  matters,  but  has  written  and 
spoken  much  on  civic  affairs,  his  utterances  always  commanding  attention 
because  of  their  clearness  and  thoughtfulness.  The  discussion  of  the  achieve- 
ments of  American  democracy,  which  is  here  given  with  some  abridgment, 
was  originally  delivered  in  1888  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  of 
Harvard  University.] 

In  discussing  some  parts  of  our  national  experience,  I  intend 
to  confine  myself  to  moral  and  intellectual  phenomena,  and 
shall  have  little  to  say  about  the  material  prosperity  of  the 

iFrom  American  Contributions  to  'Civilisation.  (Copyright,  1907,  The  Century 
Company.)  Reprinted  by  permission. 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  179 

country.  The  rapid  growth  of  the  United  States  in  population, 
wealth,  and  everything  which  constitutes  material  strength  is, 
indeed,  marvelous;  but  this  concomitant  of  the  existence  of 
democratic  institutions  in  a  fertile  land,  rich  also  in  minerals, 
ores,  oil,  and  gas,  has  often  been  dilated  upon,  and  may  be  dis- 
missed with  only  two  remarks:  First,  that  a  great  deal  of  moral 
vigor  has  been  put  into  the  material  development  of  the  United 
States;  and,  secondly,  that  widespread  comfort  ought  to  promote 
rather  than  to  hinder  the  civilizing  of  a  people.  Sensible  and 
righteous  government  ought  ultimately  to  make  a  nation  rich; 
and  although  this  proposition  cannot  be  directly  reversed,  yet 
diffused  well-being,  comfort,  and  material  prosperity  establish  a 
fair  presumption  in  favor  of  the  government  and  the  prevailing 
social  conditions  under  which  these  blessings  have  been  secured. 

The  first  question  I  wish  to  deal  with  is  a  fundamental  one: 
How  wisely,  and  by  what  process,  has  the  American  people  made 
up  its  mind  upon  public  questions  of  supreme  difficulty  and  im- 
portance? Not  how  will  it,  or  how  might  it,  make  up  its  mind, 
but  how  has  it  made  up  its  mind?  It  is  commonly  said  that  the 
multitude,  being  ignorant  and  untrained,  cannot  reach  so  wise 
a  conclusion  upon  questions  of  state  as  the  cultivated  few;  that 
the  wisdom  of  a  mass  of  men  can  only  be  an  average  wisdom  at 
the  best;  and  that  democracy,  which  in  things  material  levels 
up,  in  things  intellectual  and  moral  levels  down.  Even  De 
Tocqueville  says  that  there  is  a  middling  standard  of  knowledge 
in  a  democracy,  to  which  some  rise  and  others  descend.  Let  us 
put  these  speculative  opinions,  which  have  so  plausible  a  sound, 
in  contrast  with  American  facts,  and  see  what  conclusions  are 
to  be  drawn. 

The  people  of  this  country  have  had  three  supreme  questions 
to  settle  within  the  last  hundred  and  thirty  years:  first,  the 
question  of  independence  of  Great  Britain;  secondly,  the  ques- 
tion of  forming  a  firm  federal  union;  and  thirdly,  the  question  of 
maintaining  that  union  at  whatever  cost  of  blood  and  treasure. 
In  the  decision  of  these  questions,  four  generations  of  men  took 
active  part.  The  first  two  questions  were  settled  by  a  population 
mainly  English;  but  when  the  third  was  decided,  die  foreign 


i8o  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

admixture  was  already  considerable.  That  graver  or  more  far- 
reaching  political  problems  could  be  presented  to  any  people,  it 
is  impossible  to  imagine.  Everybody  can  now  see  that  in  each 
case  the  only  wise  decision  was  arrived  at  by  the  multitude,  in 
spite  of  difficulties  and  dangers  which  many  contemporary  states- 
men and  publicists  of  our  own  and  other  lands  thought  insuper- 
able. It  is  quite  the  fashion  to  laud  to  the  skies  the  second  of 
these  three  great  achievements  of  the  American  democracy;  but 
the  creation  of  the  Federal  Union,  regarded  as  a  wise  determina- 
tion of  a  multitude  of  voters,  was  certainly  not  more  remark- 
able than  the  other  two.  No  government — tyranny  or  oligarchy, 
despotic  or  constitutional — could  possibly  have  made  wiser 
decisions  or  executed  them  more  resolutely,  as  the  event  has 
proved  in  each  of  the  three  cases  mentioned. 

So  much  for  the  wisdom  of  these  great  resolves.  Now,  by 
what  process  were  they  arrived  at? 

In  each  case  the  process  was  slow,  covering  many  years  dur- 
ing which  discussion  and  debate  went  on  in  pulpits,  legislatures, 
public  meetings,  newspapers,  and  books.  The  best  minds  of  the 
country  took  part  in  these  prolonged  debates.  Party  passions 
were  aroused;  advocates  on  each  side  disputed  before  the  people; 
the  authority  of  recognized  political  leaders  was  invoked;  public 
spirit  and  selfish  interest  were  appealed  to;  and  that  vague  but 
powerful  sentiment  called  love  of  country,  felt  equally  by  high 
and  low,  stirred  men's  hearts  and  lit  the  intellectual  combat  with 
lofty  emotion.  In  presence  of  such  a  protracted  discussion,  a 
multitude  of  interested  men  make  up  their  minds  just  as  one 
interested  man  does.  They  listen,  compare  what  they  hear  with 
their  own  experience,  consider  the  bearings  of  the  question  on 
their  own  interests,  and  consult  their  self-respect,  their  hopes, 
and  their  fears.  Not  one  in  a  thousand  of  them  could  originate, 
or  even  state  with  precision,  the  arguments  he  hears;  not  one  in 
a  thousand  could  give  a  clear  account  of  his  own  observations, 
processes  of  thought,  and  motives  of  action  upon  the  subject 
— but  the  collective  judgment  is  informed  and  guided  by  the 
keener  wits  and  stronger  wills,  and  the  collective  wisdom  is 
higher  and  surer  in  guiding  public  conduct  than  that  of  one  mind 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  181 

or  of  several  superior  minds  uninstructed  by  million-eyed 
observation  and  million- tongued  debate.  .  .  . 

I  shall  next  consider  certain  forms  of  mental  and  moral  ac- 
tivity which  the  American  democracy  demands  of  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  the  best  citizens,  but  which  are  without  parallel  in 
despotic  and  oligarchic  states.  I  refer  to  the  widely  diffused  and 
ceaseless  activity  which  maintains,  first,  the  immense  Federal 
Union,  with  all  its  various  subdivisions  into  states,  counties, 
and  towns;  secondly,  the  voluntary  system  in  religion;  and 
thirdly,  the  voluntary  system  in  the  higher  instruction. 

To  have  carried  into  successful  practice  on  a  great  scale  the 
federative  principle,  which  binds  many  semi-independent  states 
into  one  nation,  is  a  good  work  done  for  all  peoples.  Federation 
promises  to  counteract  the  ferocious  quarrelsomeness  of  man- 
kind, and  to  abolish  the  jealousy  of  trade;  but  its  price  in  mental 
labor  and  moral  initiative  is  high.  It  is  a  system  which  demands 
not  only  vital  force  at  the  heart  of  the  state,  but  a  diffused  vital- 
ity in  every  part.  In  a  despotic  government  the  intellectual 
and  moral  force  of  the  whole  organism  radiates  from  the  central 
seat  of  power;  in  a  federal  union  political  vitality  must  be  dif- 
fused throughout  the  whole  organism,  as  animal  heat  is  developed 
and  maintained  in  every  molecule  of  the  entire  body.  The  suc- 
cess of  the  United  States  as  a  federal  union  has  been  and  is 
effected  by  the  watchfulness,  industry,  and  public  spirit  of  mil- 
lions of  men  who  spend  in  that  noble  cause  the  greater  part  of 
their  leisure,  and  of  the  mental  force  which  can  be  spared  from 
bread-winning  occupations.  The  costly  expenditure  goes  on 
without  ceasing,  all  over  the  country,  wherever  citizens  come 
together  to  attend  to  the  affairs  of  the  village,  town,  county,  or 
state.  This  is  the  price  of  liberty  and  union.  The  well-known 
promptness  and  skill  of  Americans  in  organizing  a  new  com- 
munity result  from  the  fact  that  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
Americans — and  their  fathers  before  them — have  had  practice 
in  managing  public  affairs.  To  get  this  practice  costs  time,  labor, 
and  vitality,  which  in  a  despotic  or  oligarchic  state  are  seldom 
spent  in  this  direction. 

The  successful  establishment  and  support  of  religious  insti- 


182  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

tutions — churches,  seminaries,  and  religious  charities — upon  a 
purely  voluntary  system,  is  another  unprecedented  achievement 
of  the  American  democracy.  In  only  three  generations  American 
democratic  society  has  effected  the  complete  separation  of 
church  and  state,  a  reform  which  no  other  people  has  ever  at- 
tempted. Yet  religious  institutions  are  not  stinted  in  the  United 
States;  on  the  contrary,  they  abound  and  thrive,  and  all  alike 
are  protected  and  encouraged,  but  not  supported,  by  the  state. 
Who  has  taken  up  the  work  which  the  state  has  relinquished? 
Somebody  has  had  to  do  it,  for  the  work  is  done.  Who  provides 
the  money  to  build  churches,  pay  salaries,  conduct  missions,  and 
educate  ministers?  Who  supplies  the  brains  for  organizing  and 
maintaining  these  various  activities?  This  is  the  work,  not  of  a 
few  officials,  but  of  millions  of  intelligent  and  devoted  men  and 
women  scattered  through  all  the  villages  and  cities  of  the  broad 
land.  The  maintenance  of  churches,  seminaries,  and  charities  by 
voluntary  contributions  and  by  the  administrative  labors  of 
volunteers,  implies  an  enormous  and  incessant  expenditure  of 
mental  and  moral  force.  It  is  a  force  which  must  ever  be  renewed 
from  generation  to  generation;  for  it  is  a  personal  force,  con- 
stantly expiring,  and  as  constantly  to  be  replaced.  Into  the 
maintenance  of  the  voluntary  system  in  religion  has  gone  a  good 
part  of  the  moral  energy  which  three  generations  have  been  able 
to  spare  from  the  work  of  getting  a  living;  but  it  is  worth  the 
sacrifice,  and  will  be  accounted  in  history  one  of  the  most  re- 
markable feats  of  American  public  spirit  and  faith  hi  freedom. 
A  similar  exhibition  of  diffused  mental  and  moral  energy  has 
accompanied  the  establishment  and  the  development  of  a  sys- 
tem of  higher  instruction  in  the  United  States,  with  no  inheri- 
tance of  monastic  endowments,  and  no  gifts  from  royal  or 
ecclesiastical  personages  disposing  of  great  resources  derived 
from  the  state,  and  with  but  scanty  help  from  the  public  purse. 
Whoever  is  familiar  with  the  colleges  and  universities  of  the 
United  States  knows  that  the  creation  of  these  democratic  insti- 
tutions has  cost  the  life-work  of  thousands  of  devoted  men. 
At  the  sacrifice  of  other  aspirations,  and  under  heavy  discour- 
agements and  disappointments,  but  with  faith  and  hope,  these 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  183 

teachers  and  trustees  have  built  up  institutions,  which,  however 
imperfect,  have  cherished  scientific  enthusiasm,  fostered  piety, 
literature,  art,  and  maintained  the  standards  of  honor  and  pub- 
lic duty,  and  steadily  kept  in  view  the  ethical  ideas  which  democ- 
racy cherishes.  It  has  been  a  popular  work,  to  which  large  num- 
bers of  people  in  successive  generations  have  contributed  of  their 
substance  or  of  their  labor.  The  endowment  of  institutions  of 
education,  including  libraries  and  museums,  by  private  persons 
in  the  United  States,  is  a  phenomenon  without  precedent  or  par- 
allel, and  is  a  legitimate  effect  of  democratic  institutions.  Under 
a  tyranny — were  it  that  of  a  Marcus  Aurelius — or  an  oligar- 
chy— were  it  as  enlightened  as  that  which  now  rules  Germany — 
such  a  phenomenon  would  be  simply  impossible.  The  University 
of  Strasburg,  was  lately  established  by  an  imperial  decree,  and 
is  chiefly  maintained  out  of  the  revenue  of  the  state.  Harvard 
University  has  been  250  years  in  growing  to  its  present  stature, 
and  is  even  now  inferior  at  many  points  to  the  new  University 
of  Strasburg;  but  Harvard  is  the  creation  of  thousands  of  per- 
sons, living  and  dead,  rich  and  poor,  learned  and  simple,  who 
have  voluntarily  given  it  then:  tune,  thought,  or  money,  and 
lavished  upon  it  their  affection;  Strasburg  exists  by  the  mandate 
of  the  ruling  few  directing  upon  it  a  part  of  the  product  of  ordi- 
nary taxation.  Like  the  voluntary  system  in  religion,  the  volun- 
tary system  in  the  higher  education  fortifies  democracy;  each 
demands  from  the  community  a  large  outlay  of  intellectual 
activity  and  moral  vigor. 

There  is  another  direction  in  which  the  people  of  the  United 
States  have  spent  and  are  now  spending  a  vast  amount  of  in- 
tellectual and  moral  energy — a  direction  not,  as  in  the  three 
cases  just  considered,  absolutely  peculiar  to  the  American  re- 
public, but  still  highly  characteristic  of  democracy.  I  mean 
the  service  of  corporations.  Within  the  last  hundred  years  the 
American  people  have  invented  a  new  and  large  application  of 
the  ancient  principle  of  incorporation.  We  are  so  accustomed  to 
corporations  as  indispensable  agents  in  carrying  on  great  public 
works  and  services,  and  great  industrial  or  financial  operations, 
that  we  forget  the  very  recent  development  of  the  corporation 


i84  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

with  limited  liability  as  a  common  business  agent.  Prior  to  1789 
there  were  only  two  corporations  for  business  purposes  in  Massa- 
chusetts. The  English  general  statute  which  provides  for  in- 
corporation with  limited  liability  dates  only  from  1855.  No 
other  nation  has  made  such  general  or  such  successful  use  of 
corporate  powers  as  the  American — and  for  the  reason  that  the 
method  is  essentially  a  democratic  method,  suitable  for  a  country 
in  which  great  individual  or  family  properties  are  rare,  and  small 
properties  are  numerous.  Freedom  of  incorporation  makes 
possible  great  combinations  of  small  capitals,  and,  while  winning 
the  advantages  of  concentrated  management,  permits  diffused 
ownership.  These  merits  have  been  quickly  understood  and 
turned  to  account  by  the  American  democracy.  The  service  of 
many  corporations  has  become  even  more  important  than  the 
service  of  the  several  States  of  the  Union.  The  managers  of 
great  companies  have  trusts  reposed  in  them  which  are  matched 
only  in  the  highest  executive  offices  of  the  nation;  and  they  are 
relatively  free  from  the  numerous  checks  and  restrictions  under 
which  the  highest  national  officials  must  always  act.  The  ac- 
tivity of  corporations,  great  and  small,  penetrates  every  part  of 
the  industrial  and  social  body,  and  their  daily  maintenance 
brings  into  play  more  mental  and  moral  force  than  the  main- 
tenance of  all  the  governments  on  the  Continent  combined.  .  .  . 
It  is  easy  to  see  some  of  the  reasons  why  American  corpora- 
tions command  the  services  of  men  of  high  capacity  and  char- 
acter, who  in  other  countries  or  in  earlier  times  would  have  been 
in  the  service  of  the  state.  In  American  democratic  society  cor- 
porations supplement  the  agencies  of  the  state,  and  their  func- 
tions have  such  importance  in  determining  conditions  of  labor, 
diffusing  comfort  and  general  well-being  among  millions  of 
people,  and  utilizing  innumerable  large  streams  and  little  rills 
of  capital,  that  the  upper  grades  of  their  service  are  reached  by 
merit,  are  filled,  as  a  rule,  upon  a  tenure  during  good  behavior 
and  efficiency,  are  well  paid,  and  have  great  dignity  and  con- 
sideration. Of  the  enormous  material  benefits  which  have  re- 
sulted from  the  American  extension  of  the  principle  of  incorpora- 
tion, I  need  say  nothing.  I  wish  only  to  point  out  that  freedom 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  185 

of  incorporation,  though  no  longer  exclusively  a  democratic 
agency,  has  given  strong  support  to  democratic  institutions; 
and  that  a  great  wealth  of  intellect,  energy,  and  fidelity  is 
devoted  to  the  service  of  corporations  by  their  officers  and 
directors. 

The  four  forms  of  mental  and  moral  activity  which  I  have 
been  considering — that  which  maintains  political  vitality 
throughout  the  Federal  Union;  that  which  supports  unsubsidized 
religious  institutions;  that  which  develops  the  higher  instruction 
in  the  arts  and  sciences,  and  trams  men  for  all  the  professions; 
and  that  which  is  applied  to  the  service  of  corporations — all 
illustrate  the  educating  influence  of  democratic  institutions — an 
influence  which  foreign  observers  are  apt  to  overlook  or  under- 
estimate. The  ballot  is  not  the  only  political  institution  which 
has  educated  the  American  democracy.  Democracy  is  a  training- 
school  in  which  multitudes  learn  in  many  ways  to  take  thought 
for  others,  to  exercise  public  functions,  and  to  bear  public  re- 
sponsibilities. 

So  many  critics  of  the  theory  of  democracy  have  maintained 
that  a  democratic  government  would  be  careless  of  public  obli- 
gations, and  unjust  toward  private  property,  that  it  will  be 
interesting  to  inquire  what  a  century  of  American  experience 
indicates  upon  this  important  point.  Has  there  been  any  dis- 
position on  the  part  of  the  American  democracy  to  create  exag- 
gerated public  debts,  to  throw  the  burden  of  public  debts  on 
posterity  rather  than  on  the  present  generation,  or  to  favor  in 
legislation  the  poorer  sort  as  against  the  richer,  the  debtor  as 
against  the  creditor? 

The  answer  to  the  question  is  not  doubtful.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  the  sudden  creation  of  the  great  national  debt  occasioned 
by  the  Civil  War,  the  American  communities  have  been  very 
moderate  in  borrowing,  the  State  debts  being  for  the  most  part 
insignificant,  and  the  city  debts  far  below  the  English  standard. 
Moreover,  these  democratic  communities,  with  a  few  local  and 
temporary  exceptions,  pay  their  public  debts  more  promptly 
than  any  state  under  the  rule  of  a  despot  or  a  class  has  ever 
done.  The  government  of  the  United  States  has  once  paid  the 


i86  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

whole  of  its  public  debt,  and  is  in  a  fair  way  to  perform  that 
feat  again 

After  observing  the  facts  of  a  full  century,  one  may  there- 
fore say  of  the  American  democracy  that  it  has  contracted  public 
debt  with  moderation,  paid  it  with  unexampled  promptness, 
acquired  as  good  a  public  credit  as  the  world  has  ever  known, 
made  private  property  secure,  and  shown  no  tendency  to  attack 
riches  or  to  subsidize  poverty,  or  in  either  direction  to  violate 
the  fundamental  principle  of  democracy,  that  all  men  are  equal 
before  the  law.  The  significance  of  these  facts  is  prodigious. 
They  mean  that,  as  regards  private  property  and  its  security, 
a  government  by  the  many,  for  the  many,  is  more  to  be  trusted 
than  any  other  form  of  government;  and  that  as  regards  public 
indebtedness,  an  experienced  democracy  is  more  likely  to  exhibit 
just  sentiments  and  practical  good  judgment  than  an  oligarchy 
or  a  tyranny. 

An  argument  against  democracy,  which  evidently  had  great 
weight  with  Sir  Henry  Maine,  because  he  supposed  it  to  rest 
upon  the  experience  of  mankind,  is  stated  as  follows:  Progress 
and  reformation  have  always  been  the  work  of  the  few,  and 
have  been  opposed  by  the  many;  therefore  democracies  will  be 
obstructive.  This  argument  is  completely  refuted  by  the  first 
century  of  the  American  democracy,  alike  in  the  field  of  morals 
and  jurisprudence,  and  the  field  of  manufactures  and  trade. 
Nowhere,  for  instance,  has  the  great  principle  of  religious  tolera- 
tion been  so  thoroughly  put  in  practice  as  in  the  United  States; 
nowhere  have  such  well-meant  and  persistent  efforts  been  made 
to  improve  the  legal  status  of  women;  nowhere  has  the  conduct  of 
hospitals,  asylums,  reformatories,  and  prisons  been  more  care- 
fully studied;  nowhere  have  legislative  remedies  for  acknowledged 
abuses  and  evils  been  more  promptly  and  perseveringly  sought. 
There  was  a  certain  plausibility  in  the  idea  that  the  multitude, 
who  live  by  labor  in  established  modes,  would  be  opposed  to 
inventions  which  would  inevitably  cause  industrial  revolutions; 
but  American  experience  completely  upsets  this  notion.  For 
promptness  hi  making  physical  forces  and  machinery  do  the 
work  of  men,  the  people  of  the  United  States  surpass  incontest- 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  187 

ably  all  other  peoples.  The  people  that  invented  and  introduced 
with  perfect  commercial  success  the  river  steamboat,  the  cotton- 
gin,  the  parlor-car  and  the  sleeping-car,  the  grain-elevator,  the 
street  railway — both  surface  and  elevated — the  telegraph,  the 
telephone,  the  rapid  printing-press,  the  cheap  book  and  news- 
paper, the  sewing-machine,  the  steam  fire-engine,  agricultural 
machinery,  the  pipe-lines  for  natural  oil  and  gas,  and  machine- 
made  clothing,  boots,  furniture,  tools,  screws,  wagons,  firearms, 
and  watches — this  is  not  a  people  to  vote  down  or  hinder  labor- 
saving  invention  or  beneficent  industrial  revolution.  The  fact  is 
that  in  a  democracy  the  interests  of  the  greater  number  will 
ultimately  prevail  as  they  should.  It  was  the  stage-drivers  and 
inn-keepers,  not  the  multitude,  who  wished  to  suppress  the  loco- 
motive; it  is  some  publishers  and  typographical  unions,  not  the 
mass  of  the  people,  who  wrongly  imagine  that  they  have  an  in- 
terest in  making  books  dearer  than  they  need  be.  Furthermore, 
a  just  liberty  of  combination  and  perfect  equality  before  the  law, 
such  as  prevail  in  a  democracy,  enable  men  or  companies  to  en- 
gage freely  in  new  undertakings  at  their  own  risk,  and  bring 
them  to  triumphant  success,  if  success  be  in  them,  whether  the 
multitude  approve  them  or  not.  The  consent  of  the  multitude 
is  not  necessary  to  the  success  of  a  printing-press  which  prints 
twenty  thousand  copies  of  a  newspaper  hi  an  hour,  or  of  a  ma- 
chine cutter  which  cuts  out  twenty  overcoats  at  one  chop.  In 
short,  the  notion  that  democracy  will  hinder  religious,  political, 
and  social  reformation  and  progress,  or  restrain  commercial  and 
industrial  improvement,  is  a  chimera. 

There  is  another  criticism  of  the  working  of  democratic  insti- 
tutions, more  formidable  than  the  last,  which  the  American 
democracy  is  in  a  fair  way  to  dispose  of.  It  is  said  that  democ- 
racy is  fighting  against  the  best-determined  and  most  peremp- 
tory of  biological  laws,  namely,  the  law  of  heredity,  with  which 
law  the  social  structure  of  monarchical  and  oligarchical  states  is 
in  strict  conformity.  This  criticism  fails  to  recognize  the  dis- 
tinction between  artificial  privileges  transmissible  without  re- 
gard to  inherited  virtues  or  powers,  and  inheritable  virtues  or 
powers  transmissible  without  regard  to  hereditary  privileges. 


i88  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

Artificial  privileges  will  be  abolished  by  a  democracy;  natural, 
inheritable  virtues  or  powers  are  as  surely  transmissible  under  a 
democracy  as  under  any  other  form  of  government.  Families  can 
be  made  just  as  enduring  in  a  democratic  as  in  an  oligarchic 
State,  if  family  permanence  be  desired  and  aimed  at.  The 
desire  for  the  continuity  of  vigorous  families,  and  for  the  repro- 
duction of  beauty,  genius,  and  nobility  of  character  is  universal. 
"From  fairest  creatures  we  desire  increase"  is  the  commonest  of 
sentiments.  The  American  multitude  will  not  take  the  children 
of  distinguished  persons  on  trust;  but  it  is  delighted  when  an 
able  man  has  an  abler  son,  or  a  lovely  mother  a  lovelier  daughter. 
That  a  democracy  does  not  prescribe  the  close  intermarriage 
which  characterizes  a  strict  aristocracy,  so-called,  is  physically 
not  a  disadvantage,  but  a  great  advantage  for  the  freer  society. 
The  French  nobility  and  the  English  House  of  Lords  furnish 
good  evidence  that  aristocracies  do  not  succeed  in  perpetuating 
select  types  of  intellect  or  of  character. 

From  this  consideration  of  the  supposed  conflict  between 
democracy  and  the  law  of  heredity  the  transition  is  easy  to  my 
last  topic;  namely,  the  effect  of  democratic  institutions  on  the 
production  of  ladies  and  gentlemen.  There  can  be  no  question 
that  a  general  amelioration  of  manners  is  brought  about  in  a 
democracy  by  public  schools,  democratic  churches,  public  con- 
veyances, without  distinction  of  class,  universal  suffrage,  town- 
meetings,  and  all  the  multifarious  associations  in  which  demo- 
cratic society  delights;  but  this  general  amelioration  might  exist, 
and  yet  the  highest  types  of  manners  might  fail.  Do  these  fail? 
On  this  important  point  American  experience  is  already  inter- 
esting, and  I  think  conclusive.  Forty  years  ago  Emerson  said 
it  was  a  chief  felicity  of  our  country  that  it  excelled  in  women. 
It  excels  more  and  more.  Who  has  not  seen  in  public  and  in 
private  life  American  women  unsurpassable  in  grace  and  gra- 
ciousness,  in  serenity  and  dignity,  in  effluent  gladness  and 
abounding  courtesy?  Now,  the  lady  is  the  consummate  fruit  of 
human  society  at  its  best.  In  all  the  higher  walks  of  American 
life  there  are  men  whose  bearing  and  aspect  at  once  distinguish 
them  as  gentlemen.  They  have  personal  force,  magnanimity, 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  189 

moderation,  and  refinement;  they  are  quick  to  see  and  to  sym- 
pathize; they  are  pure,  brave,  and  firm.  These  are  also  the  quali- 
ties that  command  success;  and  herein  lies  the  only  natural 
connection  between  the  possession  of  property  and  nobility  of 
character.  In  a  mobile  or  free  society  the  excellent  or  noble  man 
is  likely  to  win  ease  and  independence;  but  it  does  not  follow  that 
under  any  form  of  government  the  man  of  many  possessions  is 
necessarily  excellent.  On  the  evidence  of  my  reading  and  of  my 
personal  observation  at  home  and  abroad,  I  fully  believe  that 
there  is  a  larger  proportion  of  ladies  and  gentlemen  in  the  United 
States  than  in  any  other  country.  This  proposition  is,  I  think, 
true  with  the  highest  definition  of  the  term  "lady"  or  "gentle- 
man;" but  it  is  also  true,  if  ladies  and  gentlemen  are  only  per- 
sons who  are  clean  and  well-dressed,  who  speak  gently  and  eat 
with  their  forks.  It  is  unnecessary,  however,  to  claim  any 
superiority  for  democracy  in  this  respect;  enough  that  the  high- 
est types  of  manners  in  men  and  women  are  produced  abun- 
dantly on  democratic  soil. 

It  would  appear  then  from  American  experience  that  neither 
generations  of  privileged  ancestors,  nor  large  inherited  posses- 
sions, are  necessary  to  the  making  of  a  lady  or  a  gentleman. 
What  is  necessary?  In  the  first  place,  natural  gifts.  The  gentle- 
man is  born  in  a  democracy,  no  less  than  in  a  monarchy.  In  other 
words,  he  is  a  person  of  fine  bodily  and  spiritual  qualities,  mostly 
innate.  Secondly,  he  must  have,  through  elementary  education, 
early  access  to  books,  and  therefore  to  great  thoughts  and  high 
examples.  Thirdly,  he  must  be  early  brought  into  contact  with 
some  refined  and  noble  person — father,  mother,  teacher,  pastor, 
employer,  or  friend.  These  are  the  only  necessary  conditions  in 
peaceful  tunes  and  in  law-abiding  communities  like  ours.  Ac- 
cordingly, such  facts  as  the  following  are  common  in  the  United 
States:  One  of  the  numerous  children  of  a  small  farmer  manages 
to  fit  himself  for  college,  works  his  way  through  college,  becomes 
a  lawyer,  at  forty  is  a  much-trusted  man  in  one  of  the  chief 
cities  of  the  Union,  and  is  distinguished  for  the  courtesy  and 
dignity  of  his  bearing  and  speech.  The  son  of  a  country  black- 
smith is  taught  and  helped  to  a  small  college  by  his  minister;  he 


IQO  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

himself  becomes  a  minister,  has  a  long  fight  with  poverty  and 
ill-health,  but  at  forty-five  holds  as  high  a  place  as  his  profession 
affords,  and  every  line  in  his  face  and  every  tone  in  his  voice 
betoken  the  gentleman.  The  sons  and  daughters  of  a  successful 
shopkeeper  take  the  highest  places  in  the  most  cultivated  society 
of  their  native  place,  and  well  deserve  the  preeminence  accorded 
to  them.  The  daughter  of  a  man  of  very  imperfect  education,  who 
began  life  with  nothing  and  became  a  rich  merchant,  is  singularly 
beautiful  from  youth  to  age,  and  possesses  to  the  highest  degree 
the  charm  of  dignified  and  gracious  manners.  A  young  girl,  not 
long  out  of  school,  the  child  of  respectable  but  obscure  parents, 
marries  a  public  man,  and  in  conspicuous  station  bears  herself 
with  a  grace,  discretion,  and  nobleness  which  she  could  not  have 
exceeded  had  her  blood  been  royal  for  seven  generations.  Strik- 
ing cases  of  this  kind  will  occur  to  every  person  in  this  assembly. 
They  are  everyday  phenomena  in  American  society.  What 
conclusion  do  they  establish?  They  prove  that  the  social  mo- 
bility of  a  democracy,  which  permits  the  excellent  and  well- 
endowed  of  either  sex  to  rise  and  to  seek  out  each  other,  and 
which  gives  every  advantageous  variation  or  sport  in  a  family 
stock  free  opportunity  to  develop,  is  immeasurably  more  bene- 
ficial to  a  nation  than  any  selective  in-breeding,  founded  on  class 
distinctions,  which  has  ever  been  devised.  Since  democracy  has 
every  advantage  for  producing  in  due  season  and  proportion  the 
best  human  types,  it  is  reasonable  to  expect  that  science  and 
literature,  music  and  art,  and  all  the  finer  graces  of  society  will 
develop  and  thrive  in  America,  as  soon  as  the  more  urgent  tasks 
of  subduing  a  wilderness  and  organizing  society  upon  an  untried 
plan  are  fairly  accomplished. 

Such  are  some  of  the  reasons  drawn  from  experience  for  be- 
lieving that  our  ship  of  state  is  stout  and  sound;  but  she  sails — 

"...  the  sea 
Of  storm-engendering  liberty — " 

the  happiness  of  the  greatest  number  her  destined  haven.  Her 
safety  requires  incessant  watchfulness  and  readiness.  Without 
trusty  eyes  on  the  lookout,  and  a  prompt  hand  at  the  wheel,  the 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  i9I 

stoutest  ship  may  be  dismantled  by  a  passing  squall.   It  is  only 
intelligence  and  discipline  which  carry  the  ship  to  its  port. 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  CIVIL  LIBERTY1 

FRANKLIN  HENRY  GIDDINGS 

[Franklin  Henry  Giddings  (1855 )  is  a  distinguished  American  sociol- 
ogist. He  was  born  in  Sherman,  Connecticut.  After  graduating  from  Union 
College,  he  engaged  in  journalism  for  several  years.  In  1888  he  became 
professor  of  sociology  in  Bryn  Mawr,  holding  this  position  until  1894  when 
he  went  to  Columbia  University.  He  is  now  professor  of  sociology  and  the 
history  of  civilization  in  that  institution.  The  selection  here  given  was  first 
delivered  as  a  commencement  address  at  Oberlin  College,  June,  1899. 
Although  it  was  called  forth  by  the  Spanish- American  War,  it  is  pertinent 
to  the  situation  of  the  present  day.] 

Recent  events  have  raised  the  question  of  the  stability  of 
American  institutions.  The  war  with  Spam  was  bitterly  deplored 
by  many  educated  men,  who  feared  that  military  activity  would 
necessarily  create  arbitrary  power  and  curtail  the  liberties  of  in- 
dividual citizens.  When  our  demand  for  the  cession  of  the  Phil- 
ippine Islands  was  included  in  the  terms  of  peace,  and  the  treaty 
of  Paris  was  followed  by  the  despatch  of  troops  to  Manila  to 
put  down  insurrection,  these  opponents  of  the  nation's  policy, 
believing  that  their  worst  fears  were  being  realized,  asserted  that 
the  American  people,  intoxicated  with  military  success,  were 
blindly  departing  from  all  the  safe  traditions  of  their  history  to 
enter  upon  a  hazardous  and  probably  fatal  experiment  of  imper- 
ialism. The  arguments  of  these  men  have  disquieted  many  timid 
souls,  some  of  whom  seem  to  be  already  convinced  that  our 
republic  is  verily  a  thing  of  history — one  more  splendid  failure 
added  to  the  long  list  of  glorious,  but  tragic  attempts  of  earth's 
bravest  sons  to  build  an  enduring  state  upon  foundations  of 
equality  and  self-government.  Indeed,  so  despondent  have  some 
of  our  self-styled  anti-imperialists  become  that,  in  their  bitter- 
ness, they  do  not  hesitate  to  malign  the  character  of  their  fel- 

JFrom  Democracy  and  Empire.  (Copyright,  1900,  The  Macmillan  Company.)  Re- 
printed by  permission. 


I9«  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

low-citizens,  or  to  insult  the  fair  fame  of  the  nation  that  has 
nurtured  and  that  still  defends  them.  In  one  lamentable  in- 
stance, a  citizen  of  honored  name  has  so  far  lost  all  sense  of 
reality  as  to  declare  in  a  public  address  that  "we  are  a  great 
assassin  nation,"  and  that  "the  slaughter  of  patriots  stains  our 
hands." 

And  yet,  these  proclamations  of  doom  have  failed  to  arouse 
the  nation.  Some  seventy  millions  of  people  continue  their 
daily  vocations  in  serenity  of  mind,  wholly  unconscious  of  the 
impending  extinction  of  their  liberties.  Does  this  mean  that  the 
plain  people,  the  bone  and  sinew  of  the  nation,  who  hitherto 
have  shown  themselves  intelligent  enough  to  deal  wisely  and 
fearlessly  with  the  gravest  issues  of  human  welfare  are,  after  all, 
amazingly  obtuse?  Does  it  mean  that,  after  a  hundred  years  of 
level-headed  self-government,  the  American  people  are  now 
blindly  moving  toward  a  ruin  which  clear-sighted  men  should 
plainly  foresee?  Or,  does  it  rather  mean  that  these  millions  of 
plain  people,  with  all  their  mental  limitations,  are  still,  as  so  often 
they  have  been  in  the  past,  immeasurably  wiser — that  they  are 
gifted  with  a  deeper  insight,  that  they  are  endowed  with  a  truer 
knowledge  and  a  saner  judgment,  and  that  they  are  fortified 
with  a  sturdier  faith — than  are  the  prophets  of  gloom?  That  the 
latter  is  the  true  explanation  I  have  not  the  shadow  of  a  doubt, 
and  for  a  brief  hour  I  ask  your  attention  to  reasons  in  support  of 
this  belief. 

And,  first  of  all,  we  have  the  undeniable  fact  that  the  faith 
itself  which  the  American  people  feel  in  their  own  power,  in 
the  stability  of  their  institutions,  and  in  the  nobility  of  their 
destiny,  is  at  the  present  moment  ^unbounded.  Whatever  the 
pessimists  may  say,  the  millions  of  hard-working,  common 
people  do  not  believe  that  republican  government  has  failed,  or 
that  civil  liberty  is  not  to  be  the  heritage  of  their  sons.  Never 
since  the  Constitution  was  ratified  by  the  thirteen  original  com- 
monwealths have  the  American  people,  as  a  whole,  felt  so  con- 
fident of  their  place  among  the  nations,  or  so  sure  of  the  excel- 
lence of  their  polity,  and  of  the  vitality  of  their  laws  and 
immunities.  Never  have  they  been  so  profoundly  convinced  that 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  193 

their  greatest  work  for  civilization  lies  not  in  the  past,  but  in 
the  future.  They  stand  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, in  their  own  minds  fully  assured  that  the  responsibilities 
which  they  are  about  to  face,  and  that  the  achievements  which 
they  expect  to  complete,  are  immeasurably  greater  than  are 
those  which  have  crowned  the  century  of  their  experiment  and 
discipline. 

What,  then,  are  the  sources  of  this  faith?  Is  it  a  baseless 
enthusiasm,  a  thoughtless  confidence  born  of  an  ignorant  con- 
ceit, or  is  it  in  reality  a  substantial  and  truthful  forecast  of  the 
future,  which  we  may  safely  accept,  as  one  that  is  neither  more 
nor  less  than  a  projection  into  coming  years  of  those  lessons 
that  experience  has  taught  us  in  the  past? 

The  sources  of  all  genuine  faith  in  the  future  are  two.  The 
first  is  vitality.  The  second  is  our  knowledge  of  what  already  is 
or  has  been. 

The  consciousness  of  vigorous  life,  the  sense  of  physical 
power,  imparts  to  those  who  have  it  an  unconquerable  faith  in 
their  ability  to  achieve;  and  this  mere  vitality  is  undoubtedly 
the  primal  source  of  the  American's  faith  in  himself  and  in  the 
destiny  of  his  country.  It  is  also  our  best  assurance  that  the 
faith  will  find  realization.  In  no  other  population  is  there  such 
abounding  energy,  such  inventive  ability,  such  fearless  enter- 
prise as  in  the  American  people.  This  vitality  has  been  mani- 
fested not  only  in  our  industrial  enterprise,  but  also  in  that  very 
territorial  expansion  which  of  late  has  been  under  discussion. 
From  the  Louisiana  purchase  to  the  annexation  of  Hawaii  we 
have  seized,  with  unhesitating  promptness,  every  opportunity  to 
broaden  our  national  domain  and  to  extend  our  institutions  to 
annexed  populations.  Even  more  convincingly  has  our  vigor 
been  shown  in  the  fearlessness  with  which  the  cost  of  every  new 
responsibility  has  been  met.  Whether  this  cost  has  been  paid 
in  treasure  or  in  blood,  the  American  people  have  met  it  with- 
out one  moment's  hesitation.  Physical  courage  is,  after  all,  the 
elemental  factor  in  a  nation's  power,  the  very  fountainhead  of 
its  moral  stability  and  its  faith;  and  that  in  such  courage  we  are 
not  lacking,  the  records  of  Lexington  and  Yorktown,  of  New 
M 


194  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

Orleans  and  Chapultepec,  of  Antietam  and  Gettysburg,  of 
Manila  and  El  Caney,  will  tell. 

Next  to  vitality,  and  supplementing  it,  the  basis  of  faith  in 
the  future  is  a  sound,  full  knowledge  of  the  present  and  the  past. 
The  American  people  know  facts  about  their  own  numbers, 
resources,  and  activities,  which  fully  justify  their  belief  that 
they  are  at  the  beginning,  not  approaching  the  end,  of  their 
evolution  as  a  civilized  nation.  Only  in  a  few  spots  within  our 
national  domain  does  the  density  of  population  yet  approach 
the  average  density  of  the  older  European  countries.  Notwith- 
standing the  rapidity  with  which  the  best  lands  of  the  interior 
and  of  the  Southwest  have  been  appropriated  as  homesteads, 
the  intensive  cultivation  of  our  vast  domain  has  hardly  begun. 
While,  according  to  the  census  of  1890,  the  states  constituting 
the  north  Atlantic  division  had  a  population  of  107  to  the  square 
mile,  the  United  States  as  a  whole  had  less  than  22  to  the  square 
mile.  The  western  division  had  less  than  3  to  the  square  mile; 
the  great  north  central  division,  comprising  some  of  the  most 
prosperous  commonwealths  in  the  Union,  had  less  than  30; 
and  the  south  Atlantic  division,  comprising  the  old  slave-owning 
and  cotton-growing  states,  had  less  than  33.  A  population  of 
300,000,000,  instead  of  75,000,000,  or  80,000,000,  would  not 
seriously  tax  our  food-producing  capacity. 

Into  this  domain  the  population  of  Europe  continues  to  dis- 
charge its  overflow;  and  the  stream  of  immigration  shows  no 
marked  decrease  save  in  the  exceptional  years  of  industrial  de- 
pression. Of  chief  significance,  however,  is  the  fact  that  the 
greater  part  of  all  the  immigration  that  we  have  thus  far  received 
has  consisted  of  the  same  nationalities  from  whose  amalgama- 
tion the  original  American  stock  was  produced.  England,  Ire- 
land, Germany,  and  Scandinavia  have  sent  to  our  shores  the 
greater  part  of  our  population  not  descended  from  the  American 
colonists.  Of  the  foreign-born  population  enumerated  in  the 
United  States  in  1890,  33.76  per  cent  were  from  the  United 
Kingdom,  30.11  per  cent  were  from  Germany,  10.61  per  cent 
from  Canada,  10.09  per  cent  from  Norway,-  Sweden,  and  Den- 
mark, 1.22  per  cent  from  France,  leaving  only  14.21  per  cent 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  195 

from  all  other  countries.  The  total  immigration  to  the  United 
States  from  1821  to  the  3oth  of  June,  1898,  was  18,490,368,  and 
of  this  total  much  more  than  two- thirds  came  from  the  United 
Kingdom  and  the  Germanic  countries.  When  we  remember 
that  it  was  the  crossing  of  the  Germanic  and  the  Celtic  stocks 
that  produced  the  English  race  itself,  we  are  obliged  to  assume 
that  the  future  American  people  will  be  substantially  the  same 
human  stuff  that  created  the  English  common  law,  founded 
parliamentary  institutions,  established  American  self-govern- 
ment, and  framed  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

All  our  knowledge  of  social  evolution  compels  us  to  believe 
that  a  nation  which  has  not  yet  begun  to  reach  the  limit  of  its 
resources  and  which  is  thus  still  receiving  great  additions  to  its 
population  by  an  immigration  of  elements  that,  for  the  most 
part,  are  readily  assimilated  to  the  older  stock,  is  one  which,  if 
no  overwhelming  catastrophe  prevents,  must  continue  for  num- 
berless generations  to  maintain  and  to  perfect  its  civilization. 

Nevertheless,  it  may  be  said,  the  institutions  of  civil  liberty 
presuppose  something  more  than  a  vigorous  and  growing  popu- 
lation that  has  an  unbounded  faith  in  its  own  abilities  and  des- 
tinies. Great  peoples  have  given  themselves  over  to  policies — 
not  to  say  to  crazes — that  have  resulted  in  the  destruction  of 
their  primitive  liberties  and  in  the  complete  transformation  of 
their  institutions.  An  energetic  people  may  devote  itself  to  the 
production  of  wealth  or  to  military  achievements,  and  neglect 
the  less  alluring  task  of  perfecting  and  protecting  individual 
rights.  Rome  conquered  the  world,  but  at  the  cost  of  her  repub- 
lican simplicity.  Florence  and  Venice  achieved  wealth  and  splen- 
dor, but  bowed  to  despotism.  France  overran  Europe  with  her 
armies,  and  then  enthroned  her  own  military  dictator. 

These  lessons  of  history  are  often  recalled,  and  their  applica- 
tion to  American  conditions  has  often  been  attempted.  I  think 
it  is  high  time  to  protest  that,  in  scientific  strictness,  these  lessons 
do  not  apply  to  ourselves  in  any  important  particular.  The  his- 
torian by  this  time  should  understand  the  truth  (which  the 
students  of  physical  science  in  our  generation  have  so  completely 
mastered)  that  like  antecedents  have  like  consequents  when  all 


196  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

conditions  remain  unchanged,  but  that,  when  all  conditions  are 
changed,  like  antecedents,  with  unerring  certainty,  are  followed 
by  unlike  consequents.  Very  slightly,  indeed,  do  the  conditions 
of  American  life  today  reproduce  the  conditions  of  Roman, 
Florentine,  Venetian,  or  Parisian  history. 

The  overwhelming  difference  is  this:  In  the  earlier  days, 
republican  institutions  were  cherished  only  here  and  there  in 
exceptional  communities,  and  they  were  threatened  on  every 
hand  by  the  hosts  of  military  despotism;  today  they  are  rooted 
in  unnumbered  communities,  which  only  now  and  then  are 
diverted  by  war  from  the  normal  pursuits  of  peace. 

Rome,  in  the  days  of  her  republican  freedom,  was  a  single 
local  community  practically  isolated  from  any  similar  social 
organization.  Such  was  the  situation  also  of  each  of  the  Italian 
republics  and  of  Paris  after  the  Revolution;  for,  outside  of 
Paris,  France  was  not  yet  republican.  To  undermine  in  a  single 
isolated  town  or  city  any  given  form  of  government  and  to  sub- 
stitute for  it  something  totally  different,  has  never  been  a  diffi- 
cult undertaking.  But  to  offset  this  fact  we  have  the  equally  im- 
portant truth — one  of  the  most  important  that  historical  soci- 
ology discloses — that  nothing  is  more  difficult  than  to  destroy 
institutions  and  customs  that  are  rooted  in  more  than  one  spot, 
if  they  admit  of  being  carried  from  one  place  to  another.  The 
Roman  Republic  was  destroyed,  but  not  the  Roman  law,  which 
lives  today  and  is  applied  to  the  interests  of  millions  more  of 
human  beings  than  in  the  days  of  Julius  Caesar.  The  Roman 
Empire  was  overthrown,  but  not  the  Roman  system  of  provincial 
administration,  which  to  this  hour,  in  its  essential  features,  is 
preserved  in  the  municipal  and  departmental  governments  of 
every  European  state. 

Bearing  these  truths  in  mind,  let  us  look  at  the  conditions 
presented  by  the  United  States.  Instead  of  being  a  single  city- 
state,  organized  on  republican  lines,  practically  isolated  from 
any  similar  community,  and,  therefore,  defenseless  against  any 
influence  powerfully  tending  to  undermine  or  to  destroy  it,  the 
United  States  is  a  strongly  organized  aggregate  of  thousands  of 
local  republics,  each  one  of  which,  practically  independent  in 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  197 

its  home  affairs,  preserves  all  the  traditions  of  English  civil 
liberty,  of  democratic  custom,  and  of  American  constitutional 
order. 

It  is  true  that  not  all  of  these  self-governing  local  communi- 
ties enjoy  that  perfect  form  of  democratic  administration  which 
was  developed  in  the  New  England  town;  but  whether  as  towns, 
counties,  or  parishes,  as  incorporated  villages,  boroughs,  or 
municipalities,  practically  all  the  subdivisions  of  the  American 
commonwealths  are  self-governing  bodies  of  one  type  or  another. 
They  make  ordinances  and  elect  magistrates,  they  raise  and 
expend  revenues.  It  is  true  that  important  modifications  of 
local  government  are  now  taking  place  throughout  the  nation. 
The  concentration  of  wealth  and  of  population  in  the  larger  cities, 
the  long-continued  depression  of  agriculture,  and  the  consequent 
abandonment  of  farming  by  large  numbers  of  country-bred 
youth,  are  bringing  about  a  certain  readjustment  of  functions 
between  state  and  township  administration.  It  is  easy  for  the 
state  to  raise  money,  increasingly  difficult  for  the  rural  town. 
Consequently,  we  see  a  disposition  to  throw  upon  the  state 
governments  a  part  of  the  burden  of  maintaining  roads  and 
bridges,  of  supporting  schools,  and  of  caring  for  the  insane  and 
other  defective  persons.  With  this  transfer  of  financial  responsi- 
bility, goes,  of  course,  a  transfer  of  administrative  regulation. 
To  this  extent,  it  must  be  admitted,  we  are  witnessing  a  certain 
decay  of  that  local  self-government  which  hitherto  has  been 
most  immediately  bound  up  with  the  daily  lives  and  lesser  in- 
terests of  the  people.  And  even  in  the  cities  the  abuses  of  popular 
power  have,  in  some  instances,  led  to  a  transfer  of  authority 
from  municipal  to  state  governments;  as,  for  example  in  cities 
like  Boston,  which  no  longer  elect  or  through  their  mayors  appoint 
their  police  commissions,  but  accept  them  at  the  hands  of  the 
governor  of  the  commonwealth.  Yet,  notwithstanding  these 
facts,  it  is  certain  that  throughout  the  national  domain  the 
lesser  local  governments  still  have  great  vitality,  and  that  no 
modification  of  our  administrative  machinery  is  likely  to  strip 
them  altogether  of  their  functions.  Far  more  probable  is  it,  that 
the  limit  of  addition  to  the  duties  of  our  commonwealth  govern- 


ig8  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

merits  will  soon  be  reached.  Certain  functions  which  in  the  past 
have  been  performed  by  townships  and  counties,  or  by  munici- 
palities, may  be  given  over  to  the  states  because  they  pertain  to 
matters  in  which  all  the  people  of  the  commonwealth  are  directly 
interested,  but  other  matters  of  purely  local  interest  will  be 
left  even  more  entirely  than  now  to  the  local  administrative 
organs.  States  may  maintain  the  more  important  roads  and 
bridges,  but  not  the  lesser  ones.  They  will  care  for  the  insane, 
but  probably  not  for  the  ordinary  poor.  They  will  support  some 
of  the  higher  institutions  of  learning,  but  not,  to  any  great 
extent,  the  common  schools. 

Local  administration,  however,  is  not  the  only  or,  perhaps, 
the  most  important  means  through  which  the  traditions  of  civil 
liberty  are  maintained  in  our  American  Republic.  Of  the  greatest 
educational  influence  are  the  local  courts  and  their  procedure. 
So  long  as  every  boy  is  bound  to  learn,  not  through  books,  but 
through  the  events  that  happen  year  by  year  in  his  own  town- 
ship or  county,  the  fundamental  traditions  of  the  common  law, 
the  immunity  from  arrest  without  a  warrant,  the  personal 
responsibility  of  the  officer  of  the  law,  the  right  of  bail  and  of 
trial  by  jury,  the  right  of  free  speech  and  of  public  meeting,  there 
is  little  danger  that  the  American  people  will  submit  tamely  to 
any  arbitrary  attempt  of  a  central  government  to  abridge  these 
liberties. 

If  these  things  are  true,  then  it  is  further  true  that  from  the 
traditions  and  existing  habits  of  any  one  of  these  thousands  of 
self-governing  local  communities,  together  composing  the  United 
States  of  America,  could  be  reproduced  the  entire  fabric  of 
American  polity,  if  in  every  other  one  the  entire  constitutional 
system  were  suddenly  destroyed.  This  is  a  fact  unique  in  the 
history  of  civil  liberty.  It  is  a  guarantee  of  the  perpetuity  of  our 
institutions,  so  tremendous  that  only  the  blindest  of  pessimists 
can  fail  to  appreciate  its  significance.  Remembering  that,  as 
was  said  before,  a  form  of  law  or  type  of  institution,  or  even  a 
custom,  once  rooted  in  more  than  one  place  on  the  earth's  sur- 
face, is  practically  indestructible,  since  if  destroyed  in  one  it 
can  always  be  reproduced  from  another,  it  is  impossible  to 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  199 

believe  that  any  modification  of  our  governmental  system, 
whether  by  territorial  expansion  or  by  military  activity,  whether 
by  the  growth  of  trusts  or  by  any  other  phenomenon  of  the  pur- 
suit of  wealth,  can  ever,  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of 
our  vast  domain,  destroy  in  all  these  thousands  of  local  com- 
munities the  instincts,  the  habits,  and  the  institutions  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  civil  liberty. 

Not  only  will  this  civil  liberty  be  preserved,  but  it  will  also 
be  developed.  The  heritage  of  a  nation  which,  historically 
speaking,  is  yet  in  its  most  vigorous  youth,  with  generations  of 
active  effort  for  the  perfection  of  civilization  yet  before  it,  civil 
liberty  will  not  be  worshipped  with  passive  idolatry,  but,  con- 
tinually thought  about,  worked  over,  and  enlarged  by  a  reflec- 
tive people  of  abounding  vitality  and  limitless  faith  in  their  own 
destiny,  it  will  be  brought  to  a  perfection  of  justice,  of  discrimi- 
nation, of  fairness  to  all  men  such  as  has  not  yet  been  achieved 
under  any  human  government. 

To  a  great  extent  the  task  of  all  government — through  its 
legislation,  its  interpretation  of  law,  and  its  administrative 
activity — is  to  reconcile  equality  with  liberty.  Most  of  the 
restraints  upon  liberty  are  in  the  interest  of  that  measure  of 
equality  which  experience  has  shown  to  be  necessary  to  social 
stability,  and  which  the  conscience  of  mankind  declares  to  be 
right.  The  reconciliation,  however,  is  not  an  easy  thing  to  ac- 
complish, and  all  systems  of  law  and  policy  remain  imperfect. 

The  equality  to  which  we  here  refer,  and  with  which  public 
policy  has  to  do,  is  not  an  equality  of  bodily  powers,  of  mental 
abilities,  or  of  moral  attainments.  In  these  matters  men  are 
not  and,  while  biological  evolution  continues,  cannot  be  equal. 
Only  those  writers  who  are  willing  to  misrepresent  their  oppon- 
ents ever  attribute  to  the  founders  of  the  republic  the  absurd 
notion  that  in  these  personal  attributes  men  are  born  equal  and 
free.  The  equality  which  the  state  should  create  and  cherish 
is  that  social  condition  which  prevails  when  a  just  government 
restrains  those  who,  being  powerful,  are  also  unscrupulous, 
from  taking  any  unfair  advantage  of  the  weak,  and  when  no 
artificial  distinctions,  privileges,  or  monopolies  are  created  by 


200  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

the  state  itself  to  aggrandize  the  few  by  the  impoverishment  of 
the  many.  To  permit  the  intelligent  and  the  strong  to  profit 
by  their  superiority,  so  long  as  they  derive  their  gain  from  the 
bounty  of  nature,  and  not  from  the  enslavement  or  robbery  of 
then*  brethren,  is  one  thing;  to  permit  or  to  encourage  them  to 
use  their  superiority  at  the  expense  of  their  fellows  is  a  totally 
different  thing;  and  it  is  the  latter  which  is  opposed  by  the 
notion  of  equality  as  a  principle  of  civil  government. 

This  notion,  however,  is  of  slow  growth  in  the  minds  of  men, 
and  of  slower  application  to  the  concrete  facts  of  legal  procedure, 
political  status,  property,  trade,  taxation,  and  the  employment 
of  labor.  From  the  earliest  days  we  in  America  have  proclaimed 
the  principle  of  equality  before  the  law.  All  men,  we  say,  in 
natural  justice  have,  and  in  the  courts  must  secure,  substanti- 
ally equal  rights.  Yet  we  have  not  always  in  practice  faithfully 
adhered  to  this  high  standard.  The  poor  man  has  not  always  had 
the  same  treatment  as  the  rich  man,  at  the  bar  of  justice.  Juries 
have  been  bribed,  and  so  occasionally  have  been  prosecuting 
attorneys  and  even  judges.  On  the  whole,  however,  our  record 
in  these  matters  has  probably  been  higher  than  that  of  any  pre- 
ceding civilization  in  all  human  history;  and  it  is  certain  that 
the  moral  forces  of  the  nation  are  conspiring  to  make  it  yet  more 
satisfactory  in  coming  years. 

Political  equality  was  not  an  original  principle  of  American 
government.  Of  the  adult  male  citizens  comprised  within  the 
population  of  less  than  four  million  souls  dwelling  in  the  United 
States  a  century  ago,  not  one  half  enjoyed  the  political  suffrage. 
A  majority  were  disqualified  by  lack  of  property  or  of  education. 
The  approach  to  universal  suffrage  has  been  very  gradually 
made  by  the  abolition  of  the  earlier  restrictions,  until  now,  in 
many  of  the  commonwealths,  voters  need  not  even  pay  a  poll-tax. 

Political  equality  in  the  long  run  means  an  attempt  to  set 
limits  to  those  inequalities  of  economic  condition  which  rapidly 
grow  up  in  a  prosperous  state  if  the  rights  of  private  property 
are  unconditionally  extended  to  all  the  requisites  of  production, 
and  if  no  restraints  are  placed  upon  the  methods  of  business 
competition  or  of  trade  combination.  It  is  this  question  of  the 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  aoi 

relation  of  the  state  to  economic  inequality  which  is  by  far  the 
most  perplexing  one  to  the  conscience  and  the  judgment  of  the 
patriotic  citizen.  One  immensely  important  restriction  of 
liberty  in  the  interest  of  equality  was  made  at  the  foundation  of 
our  government,  largely  through  the  sagacity  and  fearlessness 
of  Thomas  Jefferson,  who  did  not  hesitate  to  antagonize  the 
land-owning  aristocracy  of  Virginia,  to  which  he  himself  be- 
longed. This  was  the  prohibition  of  primogeniture  and  entail. 
Thanks  to  this  wise  restriction,  the  vast  estates  that  under  our 
present  laws  may  be  built  up  in  America  can  be  continued  in  the 
same  families  through  successive  generations  only  if  their  own- 
ers have  the  business  ability  to  use  them  productively. 

To  what  extent  we  shall  further  limit  the  freedom  of  bequest 
and  the  right  of  private  accumulation,  no  statesman  or  econo- 
mist has  at  this  moment  the  prescience  to  foretell.  We  only 
know  that  thousands  of  thoughtful  and  conscientious  men  are 
asking  the  question  whether  the  withdrawing  of  some  portion  of 
the  land  and  productive  capital  of  the  nation  from  private  own- 
ership— as  has  been  done  in  Australia  and  New  Zealand — may 
not  ultimately  be  demanded  by  natural  justice  and  a  due  con- 
sideration for  the  highest  social  welfare.  We  know  that  experi- 
ments in  the  redistribution  of  taxation,  with  the  avowed  pur- 
pose of  placing  a  larger  share  of  public  burdens  upo"n  the  owners 
of  great  wealth,  are  not  likely  to  cease  for  many  years  to  come. 
At  the  same  tune,  we  may  repose  great  confidence  in  both  the 
Puritan  conscience  and  the  Yankee  common  sense  of  the  Ameri- 
can people.  Whatever  the  difficulties  of  the  undertaking,  we 
may  expect  them  to  find  a  practical  method  for  limiting  the 
undue  growth  of  economic  inequality  without  discouraging 
business  enterprise  or  destroying  our  prosperity. 

The  same  good  sense  and  sound  morality  may  be  expected 
to  solve  also  the  problems  arising  out  of  the  conflicts  of  individual 
liberty  with  natural  justice  in  our  business  methods.  Legislatures 
and  courts  have  for  many  years  been  earnestly  endeavoring  to 
maintain  the  old  common-law  rule  against  combinations  in 
restraint  of  trade;  but  just  how  morality  and  business  expediency 
are  to  be  identified  in  practice,  we  do  not  yet  clearly  see.  Certain 


202  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

it  is  that  at  the  present  moment  the  conscience  of  the  people  is 
far  in  advance  of  the  positive  law.  The  law  as  yet  provides  no 
way  to  punish  a  combination  that  deliberately  crushes  a  legiti- 
mate business,  not  by  permanently  lowering  prices  for  the  bene- 
fit of  consumers,  but  by  a  temporary  cut  which  is  not  to  be 
maintained  after  the  rival  is  destroyed.  Such  conduct  is  not 
yet  a  crime,  but  an  unsophisticated  conscience  pronounces  it 
blameworthy,  from  a  moral  point  of  view  as  wrong  as  were  the 
cattle-raiding  and  castle-burning  exploits  of  mediaeval  barons,  or 
as  any  act  of  wanton  conquest.  By  one  or  another  means  it  will 
ultimately  be  made  impossible  in  a  nation  that  values  honorable 
dealing  above  gold. 

As  among  educated  men  there  are  some  who  distrust  the  vital 
instincts  of  the  people  and  the  popular  sense  of  justice,  so  also 
are  there  some  who  deplore  the  popular  demand  for  equality. 
Blinded  by  a  culture  that  is  at  once  too  sensitive  and  too  narrow 
in  its  sympathies,  these  men  would  persuade  us  that  only  through 
the  growth  of  economic  inequality  can  we  create  a  splendid  art, 
develop  a  profound  philosophy,  and  attain  elegance  of  manners. 
To  all  such  I  would  commend  the  thoughtful  conclusions  of  that 
most  cultivated,  most  reasonable  of  modern  critics,  Mr.  Matthew 
Arnold,  whose  essays  on  "Democracy"  and  "Equality"  are, 
perhaps,  the  sanest  reflections  on  these  great  themes  that  our 
age  has  produced.  It  is  not  equality,  it  is  rather  the  unchecked 
growth  of  a  monstrous  inequality  that,  as  Arnold  shows,  ulti- 
mately destroys  all  fresh  enthusiasms,  all  spontaneous  sweetness, 
all  brightness  in  social  intercourse,  and  that  brutalizes  the  selfish 
rich  no  less  than  the  burdened  poor.  "Can  it  be  denied,"  he 
asks,  "that  a  certain  approach  to  equality,  at  any  rate  a  certain 
reduction  of  signal  inequalities,  is  a  natural,  instinctive  demand 
of  that  impulse  which  drives  society  as  a  whole — no  longer 
individuals  and  limited  classes  only,  but  the  mass  of  a  com- 
munity— to  develop  itself  with  the  utmost  possible  fullness  and 
freedom?  Can  it  be  denied,  that  to  live  in  a  society  of  equals 
tends  in  general  to  make  a  man's  spirits  expand,  and  his  faculties 
work  easily  and  actively;  while,  to  live  in  a  society  of  superiors, 
although  it  may  occasionally  be  very  good  discipline,  yet  in 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  203 

general  tends  to  tame  the  spirits  and  to  make  the  play  of  the 
faculties  less  secure  and  active?  Can  it  be  denied,  that  to  be 
heavily  overshadowed,  to  be  profoundly  insignificant,  has,  on 
the  whole,  a  depressing  and  benumbing  effect  on  the  character?" 
And  of  the  common  people  in  France  he  truly  says,  that  the 
economic  equality  which  was  created  among  them  by  the  Revo- 
lution and  the  "Code  of  Napoleon"  has  undoubtedly  given  to  the 
lower  classes  "a  self-respect  and  an  enlargement  of  spirit,  a  con- 
sciousness of  counting  for  something  in  their  country's  action, 
which  has  raised  them  in  the  scale  of  humanity."  "The  com- 
mon people,  in  France,"  he  continues,  "seem  to  me  the  soundest 
part  of  the  French  nation.  They  seem  to  me  more  free  from  the 
two  opposite  degradations  of  multitudes,  brutality  and  servility, 
to  have  a  more  developed  human  life,  more  of  what  distinguishes 
elsewhere  the  cultured  classes  from  the  vulgar,  than  the  common 
people  in  any  other  country  with  which  I  am  acquainted." 

That  this  view  of  the  relation  of  equality  to  the  highest  civi- 
lization prevails  among  the  American  people,  as  among  the 
people  of  France,  I  presume  no  one  will  seriously  question.  At 
the  same  time,  the  American  is  more  assertive,  more  self-reliant, 
more  intolerant  of  an  unnecessary  limitation  of  his  personal 
liberty  than  is  the  man  of  Gallic  blood.  The  American  is  at 
bottom  a  Saxon-Norman.  After  all  it  is  the  blood  of  the  old  un- 
tamable pirates  that  courses  through  his  veins.  Consequently, 
he  will  continue  to  struggle  with  this  practical  problem  of  the 
conciliation  of  liberty  with  equality.  This  problem  will  continue 
to  furnish  the  fundamental  questions  of  his  politics;  and  he  will 
gradually  solve  it,  not  by  the  elaboration  of  an  abstract  theory, 
but  by  a  practical  dealing  with  concrete  cases  as  they  arise. 
Just  as  our  law  is  developed  largely  through  the  evolution  of 
equity,  wherein  a  larger  and  sounder  justice  is  made  to  override 
precedents  and  technicalities  that  have  ceased  to  be  a  true  ex- 
pression of  living  conditions,  so  shall  our  politics  also  develop 
through  the  evolution  of  a  larger  equity,  which,  passing  the 
bounds  of  the  equity  known  to  lawyers  and  the  courts,  shall  be 
nothing  less  than  a  fundamental  policy,  expressive  of  the  best 
conscience  and  judgment  of  the  nation. 


204  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

The  great  task,  then,  which  I  foresee  for  the  American  people 
in  the  coming  centuries,  and  which  I  believe  is  to  be  its  supreme 
contribution  to  civilization,  is  the  creation  of  this  larger  equity, 
and  its  perfect  expression  and  guarantee  in  the  institutions  of 
civil  liberty.  It  is  to  be  the  task  of  the  American  people,  rather 
than  of  any  other  nation,  because  in  no  other  nation  are  com- 
bined so  many  of  the  forces  and  conditions  necessary  for  its  per- 
fect achievement.  No  other  great  nation  is  still  so  young,  so 
vigorous,  in  possession  of  so  exhaustless  a  fund  of  energy  for 
great  undertakings.  In  no  other  nation  are  the  people  in  reality 
so  democratic.  In  no  other  is  the  sense  of  equality  in  reality  so 
strong.  In  no  other  is  the  individual  so  assertive,  so  little  likely 
to  surrender  his  privilege  of  free  initiative,  and  to  make  himself 
a  mere  creature  of  the  state.  But  chiefly  is  this  task  committed 
to  America  because  in  no  other  people  is  so  strongly  developed 
that  spirit  of  helpfulness,  of  human  brotherhood,  which  alone 
will  suffice  to  make  the  reconciliation  of  equality  with  liberty 
complete  and  lasting.  As  yet  no  other  nation  in  the  world  has 
shown  this  spirit  in  such  practical  and  costly  forms — no  other 
has  made  such  sacrifices  to  emancipate  the  slave,  to  give  educa- 
tion to  the  poorest  and  the  humblest,  to  carry  the  elements  of 
civilization  through  home  and  foreign  missions  to  the  unenlight- 
ened of  every  land.  This  spirit,  together  with  the  other  forces 
and  conditions  that  I  have  named,  will,  in  the  coming  years, 
find  a  practical  solution  of  the  difficult  problem  of  the  right  rela- 
tion of  equality  and  liberty,  and  will  thereby  establish  a  rela- 
tively perfect  equity. 

There  is,  however,  a  proviso,  a  condition.  All  this  will  hap- 
pen, provided  the  American  population,  with  its  abounding 
vitality,  its  faith  in  its  own  powers,  and  its  heritage  of  liberal 
traditions  dispersed  throughout  a  wide  domain,  is  composed  of 
individual  men  of  the  right  moral  type.  Any  failure  of  char- 
acter, any  breaking  away  from  the  highest  ideals  of  manhood, 
could  easily  result  in  the  destruction  of  all  our  hopes. 

And  here  we  are  brought  to  a  consideration  of  the  relation 
of  our  educational  institutions  to  the  future  of  the  American 
nation,  and  to  the  survival  of  civil  liberty. 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  205 

The  duty  of  schools  and  colleges  cannot  be  told  in  a  word. 
They  must  impart  knowledge,  they  must  quicken  the  love  of 
truth,  they  must  foster  scientific  research,  they  must  discipline 
character.  But  none  of  these  is  the  supreme  obligation.  The 
highest  duty  of  any  institution  of  learning  is  to  present  to  all 
its  students  a  noble  ideal  of  manhood  and  womanhood,  and 
through  all  the  ways  of  discipline  to  strive  unceasingly  to  mould 
them  to  its  perfect  image.  Never  should  any  student  find  it 
possible  to  pass  from  the  quiet  nurture  of  his  college  life  into  the 
storm  and  stress  of  the  outer  world,  without  taking  with  him  a 
distinct  notion  of  what  sort  of  man,  merely  as  a  man,  apart  from 
all  his  attainments,  the  college  graduate  should  be;  a  notion 
that  he  can  never  efface,  even  though,  through  any  evil  dispo- 
sition, he  should  wish  to  do  so;  a  notion  that  forever  will 
force  itself  upon  his  attention,  compelling  him  through  all  the 
years  of  his  life  to  measure  what  he  is  by  that  image  of  what  he 
ought  to  be. 

Not,  indeed,  in  all  the  endless  marvel  of  detail  can  the  ideal 
of  character  be  drawn.  By  each  human  being  for  himself  must 
the  detail  be  filled  in.  But  in  general  outlines  we  can  sketch  the 
type  of  perfect  manhood  that  we  ought  to  require  of  ourselves 
and  of  our  fellowmen. 

The  perfect  citizen  demanded  by  our  own  age  and  by  our 
own  nation  can  be  characterized  in  a  single  phrase.  The  Ameri- 
can who  is  worthy  to  be  so  called,  the  patriot  on  whom  his 
country  may  depend  in  any  hour  of  peril,  the  voter  who  will 
neither  take  the  scoundrel's  bribe  nor  follow  the  lead  of  any  fool 
— he  is  exactly  and  fully  described  when  we  say  that  he  is  a 
rationally  conscientious  man. 

For  such  a  man  is,  first  of  all,  everything  for  which  the  word 
"man"  stands  in  its  truest  emphasis.  He  is  virile,  a  personal 
force,  an  organism  overflowing  with  splendid  power,  alert,  fear- 
less, able  to  carry  to  perfect  fulfilment  any  undertaking  to  which 
he  may  put  his  hand.  Moreover,  he  is  independent,  preserving 
in  his  disposition  and  habits  the  best  traditions  of  a  pioneer 
manhood,  of  those  Americans  of  an  earlier  time  who  asked  little 
and  did  much,  who  made  homes  and  careers  for  themselves. 


ao6  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

He  demands  not  too  much  of  society  or  of  his  government.  He 
does  not  expect  to  be  provided  for.  He  does  not  ask  what  ready- 
made  places  in  the  government  service  or  elsewhere  he  may  slip 
into,  to  enjoy  through  life  with  little  bother  or  anxiety.  Rather 
does  he  explore,  invent,  and  create  opportunities  for  himself  and 
for  others.  It  is  a  melancholy  thing  when  numbers  of  educated 
men  go  looking  for  "jobs,"  or  stand  waiting  for  opportunities 
to  drift  their  way.  The  educated  man  has  already  had  oppor- 
tunity, and  the  world  rightly  expects  him  to  show  powers  of 
initiative  and  leadership.  He  has  no  right  to  be  a  mere  imitator 
of  others;  and  when  he  is  content  to  be  such,  there  is  something 
radically  wrong  either  with  him  or  with  the  college  that  has 
trained  him. 

In  the  second  place,  the  true  American  is  a  conscientious  man. 
He  feels  as  a  vital  truth — and  does  not  merely  say  as  cant — 
that  no  one  liveth  to  himself.  When  he  has  provided  for  his 
own,  he  does  not  think  that  he  has  accomplished  the  whole  duty 
of  man.  He  remembers  that,  although  he  has  demanded  little 
of  society,  he  has  in  reality  received  much.  Education,  legal 
protection,  the  unnumbered  benefits  flowing  from  the  inven- 
tions, the  sacrifices,  and  the  patriotism  of  past  generations,  he 
has  shared.  These  benefactions  he  wishes  to  repay,  and  he 
realizes  that  most  of  them  he  must  pay  for  through  the  activities 
of  good  citizenship.  And  especially  does  he  realize  that  no  man 
can  pay  these  debts  by  merely  living  justly  in  private  life  and 
kindly  within  the  circle  of  his  immediate  family  and  personal 
friends.  There  is  no  more  wretched  sophistry  than  that  which 
excuses  unprincipled  conduct  in  politics,  on  the  ground  that  the 
wrong-doer  has  always  been  a  good  husband  and  father,  and  an 
honorable  man  in  his  private  affairs.  No  nation  can  endure 
which  draws  fine  distinctions  between  public  and  private  mor- 
ality. There  is  only  one  kind  of  honor,  there  is  only  one  recog- 
nized brand  of  common  honesty.  A  man  who,  to  serve  his  party, 
becomes  a  liar  and  a  thief,  is  a  liar  and  a  thief,  through  and 
through,  in  every  fibre  of  his  being,  though  he  never  told  a  false- 
hood to  his  wife  or  robbed  an  orphan  niece  of  her  inheritance. 

And,  finally,  the  true  American  must  be  a  rational  man.  His 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  207 

conscientiousness  must  not  be  of  that  narrow,  dogmatic  type, 
which  degenerates  into  mere  formality  or,  what  is  worse,  into 
intolerant  fanaticism.  We  must  not  suppose  that  because  the 
future  of  America  is  full  of  promise  it  is  devoid  of  dangers. 
Among  the  dangers  that  we  have  to  face,  none  is  more  grave 
than  that  fanatical  passion  which  too  often  manifests  itself  in  law- 
less dealings  with  criminal  offenders — in  the  name  of  justice  de- 
stroying the  very  foundation  of  legal  retribution — which  now 
and  then  takes  the  form  of  a  wild  destruction  of  property  in  a 
misguided  attempt  to  redress  the  wrongs  of  the  working  man,  or 
which,  from  time  to  tune,  breaks  forth  in  political  crazes  that 
sweep  thousands  of  voters  into  the  support  of  sheer  folly  and 
dishonor.  To  meet  these  dangers  we  must  have  men  not  only 
honest  and  manly,  but  also  cool,  deliberate,  large-minded,  able 
to  deal  reasonably  with  problems  that  are  not  easy  of  solution. 

"Not  till  the  ways  of  prudence  all  are  tried, 
And  tried  in  vain,  the  turn  of  rashness  comes." 

But  let  us  not  be  deceived  by  words.  There  is  rationalism 
and  rationalism.  The  rationalism  which  our  country  demands  is 
the  positive,  not  the  merely  negative  and  fault-finding  kind. 
We  have  quite  enough  of  men  whose  genius  consists  in  an  acute 
perception  of  all  that  is  wrong  or  imperfect.  We  have  quite 
enough  of  those  critics  of  our  political  system  who  can  find 
nothing  good  since  the  fathers  fell  asleep.  The  men  of  the  new 
day  must  be  of  tougher  fiber  than  they,  of  broader  views,  of  more 
inventive  mind.  The  efficient  citizen  of  the  twentieth  century 
must  be  rational  in  a  positive  and  constructive  sense.  A  lover  of 
justice,  a  hater  of  wrong,  he  must  be  also  a  disciple  of  wisdom. 

"For  to  live  disobedient  to  these  two,  Justice  and  Wisdom,  is  no  life 
at  all." 

In  presenting  these  views  of  the  future  of  our  country  and 
of  the  type  of  man  which  it  will  demand,  to  you  who  are  about 
to  go  forth  from  college  life  into  the  realities  of  that  future,  I 
feel  assured  of  comprehension  and  approval;  because,  hi  an 
eminent  degree,  you  have  enjoyed  the  teaching  and  received  the 


2o8  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

inspiration  which  foster  the  manly  and  womanly  character  that 
I  have  endeavored  to  describe.  Preeminently  among  our  col- 
leges has  Oberlin  stood  for  the  positive,  the  helpful,  the  hopeful 
spirit.  Preeminently  has  she  represented  ideals  of  democracy 
and  equality.  No  distinctions  of  race  or  of  nationality  have  been 
recognized  by  her.  And  not  only  this,  but  an  inspiration  of  the 
rarest  kind  you  have  had  in  the  personal  history  of  one  from 
whom  this  institution  took  its  name.  Few,  indeed,  have  been  the 
lives  that  have  so  perfectly  exemplified  the  ideal  of  rationally 
conscientious  manhood  as  did  that  of  Jean  Frederic  Oberlin,  the 
tireless  pastor  of  the  Ban  de  la  Roche.  That  district  of  the  Vos- 
ges,  when  Oberlin  began  his  labors  there,  was  merely  nine 
thousand  acres  of  rocky  soil,  with  only  mule  paths  for  roads. 
It  was  inhabited  by  a  people  desperately  poor,  and  so  ignorant 
that  few  of  them  could  read,  while  none  spoke  any  other  lan- 
guage than  a  barbarous  patois.  Before  Oberlin  died,  sixty  years 
later,  the  Ban  de  la  Roche,  largely  through  his  influence,  had 
been  transformed  into  a  productive  region,  densely  populated, 
exporting  agricultural  products,  traversed  by  excellent  roads, 
and  built  up  with  substantial  dwellings.  Its  people  had  learned 
to  maintain  admirable  schools  and  churches,  and  to  speak  the 
French  language  with  a  purity  not  excelled  anywhere  in  France. 
Such  are  the  possibilities  of  one  earnest  life.  What  may  not  you 
accomplish  toward  the  perfection  of  our  American  civilization, 
if,  in  the  active  years  upon  which  you  now  enter,  you  are  faith- 
ful to  examples  such  as  this ! 

Do  not,  however,  be  satisfied  with  any  mere  following  of 
example,  with  any  mere  conformity  to  standards  that  have  been 
held  before  you,  in  your  college  days.  From  you,  as  from  those 
who  have  lived  before  you,  the  world  will  rightly  demand  new 
thoughts  and  new  achievements.  Look  back  upon  your  Alma 
Mater  with  reverence,  but  also  with  a  filial  care  that  she  do  not 
too  early  descend  "the  quiet,  mossy  track  of  age."  As  alumni, 
let  it  be  your  study  to  discover  wherein  her  discipline  can  be 
made  more  liberal,  her  teaching  sounder  and  broader,  her  in- 
fluence wider,  saner,  and  more  enduring. 

And  carry  with  you  into  the  larger  life  of  American  citizen- 


AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY  209 

ship  the  same  spirit.  Be  not  satisfied  with  those  achievements  of 
the  nation  that  have  passed  into  history.  Do  not  forget  the 
past,  but  live  and  work  for  the  future.  If  you  and  those  others 
who,  like  you,  have  enjoyed  the  privileges  of  a  liberal  training, 
as  educated  men  and  women,  as  citizens  of  our  republic,  shall  do 
your  whole  duty  rationally,  conscientiously,  fearlessly,  there  can 
be  no  failure  of  our  experiment  in  self-government,  no  diminu- 
tion of  the  blessings  of  civil  liberty. 


N 


CITIZENSHIP    AND    PATRIOTISM 

PATRIOTISM,  INSTINCTIVE  AND  INTELLIGENT1 

IRA  WOODS  HOWERTH 

[Ira  Woods  Howerth  (1860 )  was  born  in  Brown  County,  Indiana. 

After  attending  the  Northern  Indiana  Normal  College,  he  engaged  for 
a  time  in  teaching.  He  then  spent  several  years  in  advanced  study  at 
Harvard  and  at  the  University  of  Chicago.  For  several  years  he  was  con- 
nected as  professor  with  the  latter  institution,  but  in  1912  he  became  professor 
of  education  and  director  of  university  extension  work  in  the  University  of 
California.  This  essay  is  a  clear  presentation  of  two  differing  types  of 
patriotism  that  ought  to  be  well  understood  by  all  persons.] 

Patriotism  cannot  be  really  understood  without  knowing 
something  of  the  manner  of  its  development.  Primarily  it  is  an 
identification  of  the  individual  with  the  group  to  which  he  be- 
longs— family,  tribe,  state,  or  nation.  The  patriot  proudly 
speaks  of  "my  family,"  "my  tribe,"  "my  state,"  "my  people." 
This  identification  is  based  upon  a  certain  feeling  which  is  the 
product  of  group  association,  and  this  feeling  is  instinctive. 

Sociology  ascribes  the  origin  of  patriotism  to  the  family 
life,  the  family  being  the  first  social  group.  That  this  is  cor- 
rect is  indicated  by  the  origin  of  the  word  patriotism.  It  is 
derived  from  the  Greek  word  Trarpios,  which  means  of  or  belong- 
ing to  one's  father.  The  Indo-Germanic  root  of  the  word  is 
pa,  from  which  we  have  the  Latin  pater  and  the  English  words 
father,  paternal,  patriarch,  patriotism,  and  many  others. 
Perhaps  the  root-word  itself  is  but  the  natural  infantile  utter- 
ance reduplicated  in  the  word  papa.  At  all  events  the  word 
patriotism  has  plainly  a  family  origin.  The  papa,  the  father,  be- 
ing the  provioUng,  protecting,  and  governing  element  hi  the 

Educational  Renew,  vol.  xliv,  p.  13  (June,  igia).   Reprinted  by  nermission. 
2IO 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  an 

family  group,  his  authority  supreme,  dignity,  protection,  and 
support  being  personified  in  him,  he  was  naturally  the  object 
of  reverence  and  devotion.  Loyalty  to  the  pater,  the  father,  the 
patriarch,  was  therefore  the  earliest  form  of  patriotism. 

In  the  course  of  social  evolution  the  family  enlarged  into  the 
clan,  the  gens,  or  the  tribe.  The  interests  of  single  families  were 
then  more  or  less  submerged  in  the  interests  of  a  group  of  families 
of  which  each  was  a  component  element.  The  chief  representa- 
tive of  these  larger  interests  was  the  head  man,  the  chieftain, 
including  later  the  council.  Loyalty  to  the  father  and  family 
exclusively  was  inconsistent  with  clan  or  tribal  life.  Hence 
patriotism  extended  itself  to  the  interests  of  the  larger  group  and 
their  tribal  representatives.  There  was,  so  to  speak,  an  expan- 
sion of  patriotism.  This  new  form  was  represented  in  the  clan- 
nishness  of  the  early  Scot,  "owning  no  tie  but  to  his  clan,"  the 
tribal  instincts  of  the  American  Indian  and  other  primitive 
peoples,  and  the  partisanship  of  the  early  Greeks  and  Romans. 
With  the  formation  of  the  tribe,  patriotism  passed  from  fatherism 
to  tribalism. 

In  the  amalgamation  of  tribes  into  states  and  nations  the 
expansion  of  the  feeling  now  known  as  patriotism  continued. 
Loyalty  to  the  tribe  passed  over  into  loyalty  to  the  state  or 
nation,  and  the  feeling  of  patriotism  became  what  we  ordinarily 
express  as  love  of  country,  the  feeling  which  incites  the  individual 
to  identify  his  interests  more  or  less  with  those  of  his  country, 
and  to  speak  and  act  in  a  manner  which  he  supposes  will  illus- 
trate this  identification. 

Of  course,  the  feeling  of  patriotism  is  not  confined  alone  to 
the  personal  group  of  which  the  individual  is  a  member.  It 
attaches  itself  also  to  the  natural  surroundings  of  the  group. 
"I  love  thy  rocks  and  rills,  thy  woods  and  templed  hills"  is 
the  expression  of  a  truly  patriotic  sentiment.  But  we  may 
include  in  our  conception  of  a  social  group  the  natural  con- 
ditions which  surround  it,  and  no  misunderstanding  need  arise 
from  defining  patriotism  as  primarily  an  instinctive  group 
feeling. 

Patriotism,  then,  like  all  other  things  in  the  universe,  like 


aia  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

the  mind  and  all  its  manifestations,  has  had  its  origin  and  its 
development.  It  originated  in  association,  and  association 
has  been  the  main  factor  hi  its  growth.  Now  the  fact  of  the 
evolution  of  patriotism,  and  the  manner  in  which  it  has  taken 
place,  are  the  basis  of  a  safe  prophecy  with  respect  to  what 
patriotism  is  to  become,  if  political  and  social  organization 
and  amalgamation  continue.  The  affiliation  and  federation 
of  countries  will  enlarge  the  feeling  of  patriotism.  The  "Parlia- 
ment of  man  and  federation  of  the  world"  would  as  certainly 
conduce  to  cosmopolitanism  or  political  humanism  as  tribal 
associations  conduced  to  tribalism,  and  the  consolidation  of 
tribes  into  states  and  states  into  nations  conduced  to  the  modern 
patriotic  feeling.  Love  of  country  must  gradually  give  place  to 
love  of  kind. 

Although  patriotism  expands  with  the  enlarging  composition 
of  the  group,  it  does  not  necessarily  sever  itself  from  any  point 
of  attachment.  The  family  feeling  may  still  be  strong  in  the 
tribe,  as  with  the  Montagues  and  Capulets  hi  Rome,  for  in- 
stance, and  devotion  to  the  state  may  be  powerful  in  the  citi- 
zens of  the  nation,  as  was  conspicuously  shown  hi  the  seces- 
sion of  the  Southern  States  of  America.  So  also  the  cosmo- 
politan may  retain  his  love  of  country.  He  is  not  necessarily 
"a  traitor,"  as  some  seem  to  suppose.  Neither  does  this  larger 
patriotism  imply  a  lack  of  family  affection  with  a  Mrs.  Jellyby's 
sentimental  interest  in  the  inhabitants  of  Borrioboola-Gha. 
In  pure  cosmopolitanism,  however,  the  spirit  of  national  or  racial 
antagonism  must  necessarily  vanish,  and  loyalty  to  one  country 
or  race  as  against  another  country  or  race  must  be  controlled 
and  tempered  by  devotion  to  humanity.  The  narrower  and  sel- 
fish interests  of  the  particular  country  to  which  the  citizen  be- 
longs must  be  held  inferior  to  the  interests  of  mankind.  Of 
course,  all  these  interests  may  coincide,  but  the  world  patriot 
cannot  stand  with  his  country  "against  the  world,"  unless  his 
country  is  right  and  "the  world"  is  wrong.  True  loyalty  and 
humanity  can  mean  only  devotion  to  the  principles  upon  which 
the  well-being  of  humanity  rests.  The  world  patriot  must  be 
loyal  to  right  everywhere  against  wrong  anywhere.  He  must 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  213 

stand  for  justice  to  all  against  injustice  to  any.  When  the  action 
or  demands  of  his  country  conflict  with  the  rights  of  humanity 
he  must  stand  for  humanity.  Hence  he  may  be  called  by  his 
compatriots  unpatriotic,  but  he  is  so  only  as  viewed  from  the 
interests  of  the  smaller  group.  The  "politicals"  of  Russia, 
for  instance,  are  unpatriotic  in  the  eyes  of  the  Russian  Bureau- 
cracy and  its  supporters.  Though  they  be  faithful  to  universal 
principles  of  liberty  and  equality,  they  are  unfaithful  to  the 
principles  of  Russian  despotism;  hence,  from  a  certain  Russian 
standpoint,  they  are  unpatriotic. 

George  Kennan,  in  the  Outlook  for  March  30,  1907,  gives  an 
interesting  and  pathetic  account  of  the  attempt  of  some  of  these 
politicals  to  manifest  their  devotion  to  the  larger  principles  of 
freedom  embodied  in  our  own  Declaration  of  Independence. 
He  says:  "On  the  morning  of  the  Fourth  of  July,  1876,  hours 
before  the  first  daylight  cannon  announced  the  beginning  of  the 
great  celebration  in  Philadelphia,  hundreds  of  small,  rude 
American  flags  or  strips  of  red,  white,  and  blue  cloth  fluttered 
from  the  grated  windows  of  the  politicals  around  the  whole 
quadrangle  of  the  great  St.  Petersburg  prison,  while  the  prisoners 
were  faintly  hurrahing,  singing  patriotic  songs,  or  exchanging 
greetings  with  one  another  through  the  iron  pipes  which  united 
their  cells.  The  celebration,  of  course,  was  soon  over.  The 
prison  guard,  although  they  had  never  heard  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  and  did  not  understand  the  significance  of  this 
extraordinary  demonstration,  promptly  seized  and  removed  the 
flags  and  tri-colored  streamers.  Some  of  the  prisoners,  however, 
had  more  material  of  the  same  kind  in  reserve,  and  at  intervals 
throughout  the  whole  day  scraps  and  tatters  of  red,  white,  and 
blue  were  furtively  hung  out  here  and  there  from  cell  windows 
or  tied  around  the  bars  of  the  gratings.  Late  in  the  evening,  at 
a  preconcerted  hour,  the  politicals  lighted  their  bits  of  tallow 
candles  and  placed  them  in  their  windows,  and  the  celebration 
ended  with  a  faint  but  perceptible  illumination  of  the  great 
prison." 

This  mournful  and  touching  endeavor  to  celebrate  our  Fourth 
of  July  did  not  necessarily  indicate  a  greater  love  of  our  country 


2i4  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

than  of  Russia,  but  it  did  imply  a  devotion  to  political  principles 
of  universal  application.  We  may  conceive  that  the  aspiration 
and  ideal  of  these  politicals  were  merely  that  these  principles 
should  prevail  in  their  own  fatherland.  They  loved  not  Russia 
less,  but  freedom  more.  They  at  least  approximated  a  "higher 
patriotism." 

Thus  far  we  have  spoken  of  patriotism  as  an  instinctive  feel- 
ing or  sentiment.  Now,  it  is  characteristic  of  an  instinct  that  it 
acts  without  reflection.  Though  originally  purposive  in  action, 
and  serving  as  an  agent  in  individual  or  group  preservation, 
an  instinct  takes  no  consideration  of  objective  circumstances. 
It  is  a  blind  impulse.  When  the  stimulus  is  provided  it  operates ; 
and  its  operation  has  often  led,  in  the  course  of  biological  and 
social  evolution,  to  the  extinction  of  individuals  and  of  groups. 
Patriotism,  therefore,  so  far  as  it  is  instinctive,  is  impulsive, 
blind,  unreasoning,  and  irreflective.  It  thrills,  it  hurrahs,  it 
boasts,  it  fights  and  dies  without  calmly  considering  what  it  is 
all  about.  It  resents  a  fancied  insult  without  stopping  to  as- 
certain whether  it  is  real.  It  flies  to  the  defense  of  the  supposed 
interests  of  its  group  without  inquiring  whether  the  interests 
are  worthy  or  the  danger  is  actual.  It  is  blind  patriotism  and 
springs  from  the  emotional  side  of  the  mind.  It  differs  in  no 
essential  respect  from  the  impulse  of  the  tiger  {to  defend  its 
young,  or  from  that  of  the  wild  cattle  of  the  prairie  to  defend 
the  herd.  It  is  easily  aroused  and  easily  "stampeded." 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  patriotism  which  may  be 
distinguished  from  instinctive  patriotism  by  the  word  intelli- 
gent. The  emotions  are  subject  to  the  control  of  the  intellect. 
It  is  the  function  and  power  of  the  intellect  to  inhibit,  re- 
strain, sometimes  to  eliminate,  an  instinct.  Even  the  instinct 
of  self-preservation,  strong  as  it  is,  has  sometimes  been  wholly 
inhibited  by  a  duly  informed  and  reflective  mind.  The  proper 
intelligence  may  therefore  modify,  even  reverse,  the  actions 
springing  from  instinctive  feeling.  Patriotic  sentiment  may  be 
held  subject  to  a  thorough  knowledge  of  political  and  social 
conditions  and  a  sense  of  justice.  When  so  held  it  becomes 
intelligent  patriotism.  Intelligent  patriotism,  then,  is  patriotic 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  215 

feeling,  instinctive  patriotism,  under  the  control  and  guidance 
of  knowledge  and  reflection.  It  is  love  of  country  and  the  dis- 
position to  serve  it,  coupled  with  a  knowledge  of  how  to  serve 
it  well.  It  does  not  yield  to  impulse.  It  looks  before  and  after. 
It  restrains  a  nation  from  fighting  when  there  are  no  real  in- 
terests at  stake. 

Now  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  great  need  of  all  nations 
is  intelligent  patriotism.  The  modern  patriot  is  too  much  dis- 
posed to  act  upon  impulse.  He  is  "touchy;"  he  goes  off  "half- 
cocked;"  he  is  full  of  racial  prejudice,  indulges  in  national  bom- 
bast and  braggadocio,  Chauvinism,  Jingoism,  and  manifests  a 
disposition  to  whip  somebody.  His  patriotism  is  chiefly  an 
instinctive  patriotism.  Such  patriotism  is  a  feeling  for  one's 
country  without  the  control  of  intelligence;  it  is  patriotic  zeal 
without  patriotic  knowledge.  Under  its  promptings  the  patriotic 
is  sometimes  the  idiotic.  The  utterances  and  actions  evoked  by 
it  are  sometimes  illustrative  of  the  fact  that  a  man  may  be  a 
patriot  and  still  be  a  fool. 

Among  the  effects  of  instinctive  patriotism  is  the  over- 
weening national  egotism  manifested  by  so  many  "patriots." 
There  is  a  disease  called  by  the  learned  megalomania.  Its 
primary  symptom  is  "the  delusion  of  grandeur."  So  many 
patriots  are  megalomaniacs  that  the  disease  seems  to  char- 
acterize every  nation  and  every  people.  It  led  Israel  to  regard 
itself  as  a  "peculiar"  people,  the  favorite  of  the  Almighty. 
It  induced  the  Greeks  to  call  all  other  peoples  barbarians.  The 
Chinese,  according  to  their  own  estimate,  are  "celestials,"  and 
both  the  English  and  the  Americans  speak  of  themselves  as 
divinely  commissioned  to  spread  the  blessings  of  civilization 
among  "inferior"  peoples,  even  if  they  smother  them  in  the 
process.  All  this  is  national  egotism,  megalomania.  It  arises 
from  a  more  or  less  irrefiective  instinctive  patriotism. 

Obviously,  great  national  and  social  dangers  are  consequent 
upon  instinctive  patriotism.  By  manifesting  itself  in  antipathy 
toward  another  nation,  and  in  irrefiective  action,  it  provokes 
suspicion,  jealousy,  hatred,  and  unnecessary  war.  Washington, 
in  his  "Farewell  Address,"  pointed  out  some  of  these  dangers. 


2i6  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

"Antipathy  in  one  nation  against  another,"  said  he,  "disposes 
each  more  readily  to  offer  insult  and  injury,  to  lay  hold  of  slight 
causes  of  umbrage,  and  to  be  haughty  and  intractable,  when 
accidental  or  trifling  occasions  of  dispute  occur.  Hence,  fre- 
quent collisions;  obstinate,  envenomed,  and  bloody  contests. 
The  nation,  prompted  by  ill-will  and  resentment,  sometimes 
impels  to  war  the  government,  contrary  to  the  best  calculations 
of  policy.  The  government  sometimes  participates  in  the  national 
propensity,  and  adopts  through  passion  what  reason  would 
reject;  at  other  times  it  makes  the  animosity  of  the  nation  sub- 
servient to  projects  of  hostility  instigated  by  pride,  ambition, 
and  other  sinister  and  pernicious  motives.  The  peace  often, 
sometimes  perhaps  the  liberty,  of  nations  has  been  the  victim." 
Instinctive  patriotism  forced  President  McKinley  into  a  war 
with  Spain  which,  with  national  intelligence  and  forbearance, 
might  have  been  avoided.  It  inspires  irresponsible  and  mis- 
chievous remarks  and  comments  concerning  other  nations,  which 
tend  to  provoke  hostility.  The  following  is  a  sample:  "I  would  be 
in  favor  of  annexing  Canada  right  now,  if  I  thought  England 
would  fight.  But  just  to  take  Canada  and  have  no  brush  with 
England  would  be  too  tame.  There  are  hundreds  of  young  men 
in  this  country  who  would  enjoy  a  war  with  England,  and  some 
of  the  young  veterans  of  the  war  would  not  be  slow  in  going  to 
the  front."  This  is  the  language  of  a  former  general  of  the 
American  Army  as  reported  by  the  Associated  Press.  The  cor- 
respondent of  the  Pittsburgh  Gazette  of  December  15,  1903, 
when  our  relations  with  Colombia  were  somewhat  strained, 
wrote:  "There  are  a  lot  of  young  officers  in  Washington  who 
are  hoping  that  the  complications  between  this  country  and 
Colombia  will  result  in  war.  They  do  not  expect  it  will  be  much 
of  a  war,  even  if  there  is  a  conflict  between  the  two  forces,  but 
at  any  rate  it  will  open  the  way  to  promotion  for  some  of  them, 
and  promotion  is  the  sole  ambition  of  the  soldiers."  Remarks 
like  these  are  prompted  solely  by  instinctive  patriotism, 
patriotism  unrestrained  by  social  intelligence. 

Such  patriotism  not  only  leads  to  national  bickering  and 
strife,  but  it  also  prevents  that  national  receptiveness  so  essen- 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  217 

tial  to  progress.  "The  national  egotism  which  scorns  to  learn 
of  neighbors,"  say  Brinton,  "prepares  the  pathway  to  national 
ruin.  .  .  .  That  nation  today  which  is  most  eager  to  learn 
from  others,  which  is  furthest  from  the  fatal  delusion  that  all 
wisdom  flows  from  its  own  springs  will  surely  be  in  the  van  of 
progress."1  But  instinctive  patriotism  is  not  eager  to  learn  from 
other  nations,  for  the  very  simple  reason  that  it  thinks  they  have 
nothing  superior  to  teach.  To  the  instinctive  patriotism  noth- 
ing in  foreign  nations  is  worthy  of  emulation  or  adoption.  He 
speaks  without  the  slightest  reverence  of  "Japs,"  and  "Chinks," 
and  "Dagoes;"  of  "Wild  Irishmen,"  "rat-eating  Frenchmen," 
and  "flat-headed  Dutchmen."  Such  a  "patriot"  may  be  a  gentle- 
man so  far  as  his  more  intimate  personal  relationships  are  con- 
cerned, but  as  a  representative  of  nationality  he  is  often  a 
braggart,  a  bully,  or  a  fool.  His  patriotism  is  irrational  and 
irresponsible,  and  consequently  a  danger  to  his  country. 

In  spite  of  the  dangers  of  instinctive  patriotism,  however, 
it  must  be  recognized  that,  like  other  instincts  again,  it  may 
serve  at  tunes  a  very  useful  purpose.  Indeed,  hi  the  absence 
of  social  intelligence,  it  has  been  absolutely  essential  to  the 
preservation  of  social  groups.  When  the  life  of  a  nation,  for 
instance,  is  endangered,  its  citizens  must  rise  instantly  to  its 
defense.  There  is  no  time  for  serious  reflection.  To  deliberate 
is  to  be  lost.  Hence  the  disposition  to  spring  to  arms  is  an 
element  of  national  survival;  for  it  leads  the  citizens  to  act  in 
concert,  and  so  more  effectively.  Without  instinctive  patriotism, 
no  group  in  a  hostile  environment  could  have  survived.  On 
the  whole,  those  groups  in  which  it  was  highest  developed  are 
the  ones  which  have  persisted.  Instinctive  patriotism,  then, 
has  unquestionably  been  an  element  in  social  survival,  as  well 
as  an  element  in  social  danger  and  destruction.  But  however 
serviceable  this  form  of  patriotism  may  have  been  in  the  past, 
or  however  necessary  in  a  critical  national  exigency,  it  is  not 
the  kind  of  patriotism  which  is  needed  today.  It  involves  govern- 
ments in  needless  strife,  and  it  renders  the  citizens  easily  suscept- 
ible to  the  pernicious  influences  of  kings,  diplomats,  and  un- 

iBasis  of  S trial  Rtlationships  (New  York,  igoa),  p.  60.    [Howerth's  note.] 


2i8  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

scrupulous  politicians.  Hence,  it  should  be  supplanted  as 
rapidly  as  possible  by  intelligent  patriotism. 

Intelligent  patriotism  implies  a  particular  kind  of  knowledge, 
a  knowledge  of  national  and  social  relationships,  and  of  the 
principles  of  industrial  and  political  well-being.  In  the  endeavor 
to  develop  it  in  the  schools,  for  instance,  we  may  safely  rely 
upon  the  existence  of  patriotic  feeling  and  devote  attention 
exclusively  to  promoting  the  right  kind  of  intelligence.  Salut- 
ing the  flag,  the  singing  of  patriotic  songs,  Fourth  of  July  celebra- 
tions as  heretofore  conducted,  to  say  nothing  of  most  of  the 
patriotic  appeals  from  pulpit  and  rostrum,  are  directed  merely 
to  developing  instinctive  patriotism.  The  really  needed  and 
difficult  thing,  however,  is  to  inform  the  instinct  so  that  it  will 
operate,  even  under  trying  circumstances,  to  the  real  advantage 
and  safety  of  the  nation.  Education  should  be  directed  not  to  the 
development  of  patriotic  feeling,  but  to  imparting  the  kind  of 
knowledge  by  which  that  feeling  is  restrained  and  directed. 

The  difference  between  instinctive  patriotism  and  intelligent 
patriotism,  as  I  have  tried  to  present  it,  is  not,  of  course,  abso- 
lute. Feeling  is  necessary  to  action,  and  the  two  can  not  be 
separated.  But  the  difference  between  impulsive  action  and 
national  action  is  obvious,  and  so,  I  think,  must  be  the  distinc- 
tion I  have  drawn  between  instinctive  patriotism  and  intelligent 
patriotism.  Instinctive  patriotism  is  not  be  to  supplanted  by 
intelligent  patriotism;  it  is,  rather,  to  be  transformed  into  it  by 
knowledge. 

With  the  distinction  of  the  two  kinds  of  patriotism  now  before 
us  it  will  be  interesting  to  compare  some  of  the  patriotic  mani- 
festations in  modern  political  discussion.  Instinctive  patriotism, 
with  a  superficial  knowledge  of  science,  justifies  war  on  the 
ground  of  the  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  Intelligent  patri- 
otism analyzes  the  idea  of  the  fittest,  finds  that  it  has  no  ethical 
signification,  and  strives  to  promote  all  activities  calculated 
to  fit  our  nation  to  survive.  Instinctive  patriotism  prates  in 
language  which  to  delicate  ears  sounds  almost  blasphemous,  of 
the  unpremeditated  occurrences  in  our  national  life  as  disclosing 
the  will  of  Providence.  Intelligent  patriotism  recognizes  that 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  219 

safe  and  permanent  progress  is  the  result  of  human  forethought, 
that  the  blunders  of  a  nation  are  no  less  deplorable  and  blame- 
worthy than  those  of  an  individual,  and  that  unconsidered  or 
ill-considered  action  on  the  part  of  man  or  nation  is  quite  as 
likely  to  disclose  the  will  of  the  devil  as  the  will  of  the  Lord. 
Instinctive  patriotism  melodramatically  declares  that  the  flag 
of  our  country  whenever  or  wherever,  and  no  matter  under  what 
circumstances,  it  is  erected,  shall  never  he  hauled  down.  In- 
telligent patriotism  insists  that  whenever  and  wherever  the 
flag  is  raised  in  injustice,  or  as  a  symbol  of  oppression  and 
tyranny,  the  sooner  it  is  hauled  down  the  better;  for  the  intelli- 
gent patriot  is  likely  to  have  a  feeling  that  unless  it  is  lowered 
by  our  own  hands,  the  God  of  Justice  will  somehow  tear  it 
down  and  make  it  a  mockery  and  a  mournful  memory  in  the 
minds  of  men.  Instinctive  patriotism  defiantly  proclaims, 
"My  country,  right  or  wrong."  Intelligent  patriotism  says, 
"My  country,  when  she  is  right,  and  when  she  is  wrong,  my  life 
to  set  her  right."  Instinctive  patriotism,  nonplused  by  the 
arguments  of  the  peace  advocates,  tries  to  persuade  itself  that 
such  advocates  are  uneducated  sentimentalists  and  molly- 
coddles. Intelligent  patriotism  quietly  continues  to  organize  its 
peace  leagues,  associations,  and  federations,  schools,  tribunals, 
and  unions,  confident  that  proper  intelligence  will  make  war 
impossible. 

The  difference  between  the  two  kinds  of  patriotism  is  shown 
in  nothing  more  clearly  than  the  character  of  the  two  national 
ideals  now  inculcated.  Instinctive  patriotism  has  much  to  say 
about  our  becoming  a  "world  power,"  the  inevitableness  of  war, 
and  of  our  rightful  influence  in  the  council  of  nations.  Intelligent 
patriotism  knows  we  have  long  been  a  world  power,  that  war  is 
neither  inevitable  nor  necessary,  and  is  not  so  much  interested  in 
our  rightful  influence  as  that  our  influence  be  exercised  in  the 
rightful  way.  The  instinctive  patriotic  ideal  is  militant;  the 
intelligent,  scientific  and  industrial. 

Is  it  necessary  to  inquire  which  is  the  higher  form  of  patriot- 
ism? Which  is  the  [nobler  national  aspiration,  which  evinces 
the  loftier  patriotism,  supremacy  in  war  and  the  arts  of  de- 


220  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

struction,  with  hundreds  of  millions  of  our  wealth  locked  up  in 
ships,  forts,  and  arsenals,  and  thousands  of  men  withdrawn  from 
the  peaceful  pursuits  to  man  these  instruments  of  death,  and 
become  a  burden  on  the  back  of  labor,  or  supremacy  in  industry, 
in  trade,  in  science,  in  art,  in  literature,  and  in  education,  with 
health,  wealth,  and  happiness  for  all  our  people;  and,  because 
we  have  charity  for  all  and  malice 'toward  none,  enjoying  the 
good- will  and  friendship  of  all  the  world?  For  which  should  we 
strive  as  a  nation,  to  evoke  the  fear  of  the  weaker  nations  by 
the  strength  of  our  armaments  (and  their  hatred  also,  for  hate 
is  the  child  of  fear),  or  to  deserve  and  compel  their  respect  and 
admiration  by  fair  dealing,  justice,  modesty,  moderation,  cour- 
tesy, and  charity,  and  by  our  sincerity  in  upholding  the  principles 
of  liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity? 

Instinctive  patriotism  is  thrilled  by  glowing  descriptions  of 
America  as  mighty  in  battle,  or  as  Mistress  of  the  Seas  with 
hundreds  of  battleships,  those  grim  leviathans  of  the  deep, 
plowing  the  waves  of  every  sea  and  proudly  tossing  from 
their  iron  manes  the  ocean  foam;  or  resting  unwelcome,  it 
may  be,  because  unbidden,  guests  in  the  ports  of  foreign  lands; 
each  bearing  witness  that  in  this  nation  of  ours,  conceived  in 
liberty  and  dedicated  to  the  proposition  that  all  men  are  created 
equal,  there  is  a  disposition  to  forsake  the  principles  of  the 
fathers  in  a  lust  for  power,  and  to  follow  in  the  wake  of  Babylon 
and  Nineveh,  Greece,  Rome  and  Spain,  the  nations  whose 
bloody  history  reveals  to  him  who  will  but  read  that  the  nation 
that  relies  upon  force  must  finally  become  the  victim  of  force. 
For  it  is  written,  "They  that  take  the  sword  shall  perish  by  the 
sword." 

Intelligent  patriotism,  on  the  other  hand,  is  inspired  by  the 
ideal  of  America  as  a  republic  supremely  powerful  by  the  force 
of  an  enlightened  public  opinion,  and  supremely  glorious  on 
account  of  her  successful  pursuit  of  the  arts  of  peace,  and  because 
of  her  acknowledged  leadership  in  all  that  liberates  and  lifts. 
The  prophet  of  old  declared  that  there  shall  come  a  time  when 
swords  shall  be  beaten  into  plowshares  and  spears  into  pruning- 
hooks,  and  men  shall  learn  war  no  more;  and  that  the  earth  shall 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  aai 

be  full  of  knowledge  as  the  waters  cover  the  sea.  When  these 
prophecies  are  to  be  fulfilled  no  one  can  know — 

"Ah,  when  shall  all  men's  good  be  each  man's  rule, 

And  universal  peace  lie  like  a  shaft  of  light  across  mankind; 
Or  like  a  lane  of  beams  athwart  the  sea 
Thru  all  the  circle  of  the  golden  year?" 

But  these  prophecies  imply  a  period  of  continuous  peace  and 
general  education  involving  the  diffusion  of  patriotic  knowl- 
edge. Who  can  estimate  what  this  will  mean  to  the  advance- 
ment of  the  people?  It  is  not  given  unto  men  to  foretell  what 
this  nation  is  to  become;  it  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we  shall 
be;  but  of  this  we  may  be  sure,  that  with  continuous  peace, 
universal  education,  and  intelligent  patriotism,  eye  hath  not 
seen,  nor  ear  heard,  neither  has  it  entered  into  the  imagination 
of  man  to  conceive  the  glorious  possibilities  of  the  American 
Republic. 


MESSAGE  OF  THE  FLAG 
FRANKLIN  KNIGHT  LANE 

[Franklin  Knight  Lane  (1864 )  was  born  in  Canada,  but  in  early 

childhood  removed  to  California.  He  studied  at  the  University  of  California, 
engaged  in  newspaper  work,  studying  law  later  and  entering  into  practice  in 
San  Francisco.  For  eight  years  he  was  a  member  of  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission  at  Washington.  This  position  he  relinquished  in  1913  to  become 
secretary  of  the  interior.  In  his  speeches  and  writings  he  is  always  forcible 
and  inspiring.  The  brief  address  here  given,  delivered  before  the  employees 
of  the  Department  of  the  Interior  on  Flag  Day,  1914,  deserves  a  place  among 
the  classics  of  patriotism.  With  imagination  and  insight,  with  grace  and 
charm,  it  interprets  what  the  American  flag  ought  to  mean  to  all  who  live 
under  it.] 

This  morning,  as  I  passed  into  the  Land  Office,  The  Flag 
dropped  me  a  most  cordial  salutation,  and  from  its  rippling 
folds  I  heard  it  say:  "Good  morning,  Mr.  Flag  Maker." 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  Old  Glory,"  I  said,  "aren't  you  mis- 
taken? I  am  not  the  President  of  the  United  States,  nor  a 


222  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

member  of  Congress,  nor  even  a  general  in  the  army.  I  am  only 
a  Government  clerk." 

"I  greet  you  again,  Mr.  Flag  Maker,"  replied  the  gay  voice, 
"I  know  you  well.  You  are  the  man  who  worked  in  the  swelter 
of  yesterday  straightening  out  the  tangle  of  that  farmer's 
homestead  in  Idaho,  or  perhaps  you  found  the  mistake  in  that 
Indian  contract  in  Oklahoma,  or  helped  to  clear  that  patent 
for  the  hopeful  inventor  in  New  York,  or  pushed  the  opening 
of  that  new  ditch  in  Colorado,  or  made  that  mine  in  Illinois 
more  safe,  or  brought  relief  to  the  old  soldier  in  Wyoming. 
No  matter;  whichever  one  of  these  beneficent  individuals  you 
may  happen  to  be,  I  give  you  greeting,  Mr.  Flag  Maker." 

I  was  about  to  pass  on,  when  The  Flag  stopped  me  with 
these  words: 

"Yesterday  the  President  spoke  a  word  that  made  happier 
the  future  of  ten  milhon  peons  in  Mexico;  but  that  act  looms 
no  larger  on  the  flag  than  the  struggle  which  the  boy  in  Georgia 
is  making  to  win  the  Corn  Club  prize  this  summer. 

"Yesterday  the  Congress  spoke  a  word  which  will  open  the 
door  of  Alaska;  but  a  mother  in  Michigan  worked  from  sun- 
rise until  far  into  the  night  to  give  her  boy  an  education.  She, 
too,  is  making  the  flag. 

"Yesterday  we  made  a  new  law  to  prevent  financial  panics, 
and  yesterday,  maybe,  a  school-teacher  in  Ohio  taught  his  first 
letters  to  a  boy  who  will  one  day  write  a  song  that  will  give 
cheer  to  the  millions  of  our  race.  We  are  all  making  the  flag." 

"But,"  I  said  impatiently,  "these  people  were  only  work- 
ing!" 

Then  came  a  great  shout  from  The  Flag:  "The  work  that 
we  do  is  the  making  of  the  flag.  I  am  not  the  flag;  not  at  all. 
I  am  but  its  shadow. 

"I  am  whatever  you  make  me,  nothing  more. 

"I  am  your  belief  in  yourself,  your  dream  of  what  a  People 
may  become. 

"I  live  a  changing  life,  a  life  of  moods  and  passions,  of  heart- 
breaks and  tired  muscles. 

"Sometimes  I  am  strong  with  pride,  when  men  do  an  honest 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  223 

work,  fitting  the  rails  together  truly.  Sometimes  I  droop,  for 
then  purpose  has  gone  from  me,  and  cynically  I  play  the  coward. 
Sometimes  I  am  loud,  garish,  and  full  of  that  ego  that  blasts 
judgment. 

"But  always  I  am  all  that  you  hope  to  be  and  have  the 
courage  to  try  for. 

"I  am  song  and  fear,  struggle  and  panic,  and  ennobling 
hope. 

"I  am  the  day's  work  of  the  weakest  man  and  the  largest 
dream  of  the  most  daring. 

"I  am  the  Constitution  and  the  courts,  statutes  and  the 
statute  makers,  soldier  and  dreadnaught,  drayman  and  street 
sweep,  cook,  counselor,  and  clerk. 

"I  am  the  battle  of  yesterday  and  the  mistake  of  tomorrow. 

"I  am  the  mystery  of  the  men  who  do  without  knowing  why. 

"I  am  the  clutch  of  an  idea  and  the  reasoned  purpose  of 
resolution. 

"I  am  no  more  than  what  you  believe  me  to  be,  and  I  am 
all  that  you  believe  I  can  be. 

"I  am  what  you  make  me,  nothing  more. 

"I  swing  before  your  eyes  as  a  bright  gleam  of  color,  a  symbol 
of  yourself,  the  pictured  suggestion  of  that  big  thing  which 
makes  this  nation.  My  stars  and  my  stripes  are  your  dream 
and  your  labors.  They  are  bright  with  cheer,  brilliant  with 
courage,  firm  with  faith,  because  you  have  made  them  so  out 
of  your  hearts.  For  you  are  the  makers  of  the  flag,  and  it  is 
weU  that  you  glory  in  the  making." 


234  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

GOOD  CITIZENSHIP1 

HENRY  CABOT  LODGE 

[Henry  Cabot  Lodge  (1850 )  was  born  in  Boston,  Massachusetts. 

He  was  graduated  from  Harvard  and  was  for  a  time  lecturer  in  history  in 
that  institution.  For  three  years  he  was  editor  of  the  North  American 
Review.  Since  1886  he  has  served  continuously  in  Washington  as  either 
representative  or  senator  from  Massachusetts.  In  spite  of  the  exactions  of 
public  life,  he  has  found  time  to  write  several  brilliant  volumes  on  historical 
and  biographical  subjects,  the  most  notable  perhaps  being  his  Life  of  Wash- 
ington.] 

Assuming  at  the  outset  that  in  the  United  States  all  men, 
young  and  old,  who  think  at  all  realize  the  importance  of  good 
citizenship,  the  first  step  toward  its  attainment  or  its  diffusion 
is  to  define  it  accurately;  and  then,  knowing  what  it  is,  we  shall 
be  able  intelligently  to  consider  the  best  methods  of  creating  it 
and  spreading  it  abroad.  In  this  case  the  point  of  discussion  and 
determination  lies  hi  the  first  word  of  the  title.  There  is  no 
difficulty  in  the  second.  The  accident  of  birth  or  the  certificate 
of  a  court  will  make  a  man  a  citizen  of  the  republic,  entitled  to 
take  part  in  the  government  and  to  have  the  protection  of  that 
government  wherever  he  may  be.  The  qualifying  adjective 
applied  to  citizenship  is  the  important  thing  here;  for,  while  the 
mere  word  "citizen"  settles  at  once  a  man's  legal  status,  both 
under  domestic  and  international  law,  and  implies  certain  rights 
on  his  part,  and  certain  responsibilities  on  the  part  of  his  govern- 
ment toward  him,  we  must  go  much  further  if  we  would  define 
his  duties  to  the  state  upon  the  performance  of  which  depends 
his  right  to  be  called  either  good  or  worthy.  Merely  to  live  with- 
out actually  breaking  the  laws  does  not  constitute  good  citizen- 
ship, except  in  the  narrow  sense  of  contrast  to  those  who  openly 
or  covertly  violate  the  laws  which  they  have  helped  to  make. 
The  word  "good,"  as  applied  to  citizenship,  means  something 
more  positive  and  affirmative  than  mere  passive  obedience  to 
statutes,  if  it  has  any  meaning  at  all.  The  good  citizen,  if  he 

^rom  A  Frontier  Town  and  Other  Essays.  (Copyright,  1906,  Charles  Scribner's 
Sons.)  Reprinted  by  permission. 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  225 

would  deserve  the  title,  must  be  one  who  performs  his  duties  to 
the  state,  and  who,  in  due  proportion,  serves  his  country.  It  is 
when  we  undertake  to  define  those  duties  and  determine  what  the 
due  proportion  of  service  is  that  we  approach  the  serious  diffi- 
culty of  the  subject;  and  yet  the  duties  and  the  service  to  the 
country  must  be  defined,  for  in  them  lies  all  good  citizenship, 
and  failure  to  render  them  carries  a  man  beyond  the  pale.  A 
man  may  not  be  a  bad  citizen — he  may  pay  his  taxes  and  commit 
no  statutory  offences — but,  if  he  gives  no  service  to  his  country, 
nor  any  help  to  the  community  in  which  he  lives,  he  cannot 
properly  be  called  a  good  citizen. 

Assuming,  then,  that  good  citizenship  necessarily  implies 
service  of  some  sort  to  the  state,  the  country,  or  the  public,  it 
must  be  understood,  of  course,  that  such  service  may  vary 
widely  in  amount  or  in  degree.  The  man  and  woman  who  have 
a  family  of  children,  educate  them,  bring  them  up  honorably 
and  well,  teaching  them  to  love  their  country,  are  good  citizens, 
and  deserve  well  of  the  republic.  The  man  who,  in  order  to  care 
for  his  family  and  give  his  children  a  fair  start  in  life,  labors 
honestly  and  diligently  at  his  trade,  profession,  or  business,  and 
who  casts  his  vote  conscientiously  at  all  elections  adds  to  the 
strength  as  well  as  to  the  material  prosperity  of  the  country, 
and  thus  fulfils  some  of  the  primary  and  most  important  duties 
of  good  citizenship.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said,  in  passing,  that  he 
who  labors  in  any  way,  who  has  any  intellectual  interest,  who 
employs  his  leisure  for  any  public  end, — even  the  man  who  works 
purely  for  selfish  objects, — has  one  valuable  element  of  good 
citizenship  to  his  credit  in  the  mere  fact  of  his  industry;  for  there 
is  nobody  so  detrimental  in  a  country  like  ours  as  the  mere 
idler,  the  mere  seeker  for  self-amusement,  who  passes  his  time 
in  constant  uncertainty  as  to  how  he  shall  get  rid  of  the  next 
day  or  the  next  hour  of  that  brief  life  which,  however  short 
in  some  cases,  is,  from  every  point  of  view,  too  long  for  him.  .  .  . 

Good  citizenship  demands,  therefore,  something  active;  hi 
order  to  be  attained,  the  man  must  be  useful  to  his  country  and  to 
his  fellowmen,  and  on  this  usefulness  all  else  depends.  For- 
tunately, it  is  possible  to  be  useful  in  many  ways.  "Hold  your 
o 


326  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

life,  your  time,  your  money,"  said  Lowell,  "always  ready  at  the 
hint  of  your  country."  To  him  it  was  given  to  make  the  last  great 
sacrifice.  In  time  of  war,  the  usefulness  of  man  is  plain;  he  has 
but  the  simple  duty  of  offering  his  services  to  his  country  in  the 
field.  But  the  service  of  war,  if  more  glorious,  more  dangerous, 
and  larger  in  peril  and  sacrifice  than  any  other,  is  also  the  most 
obvious.  When  the  country  is  involved  in  war,  the  first  duty  of  a 
citizen  is  clear — he  must  fight  for  the  flag;  or  if,  because  of  age  or 
physical  infirmity,  he  is  unable  to  fight,  he  must  support  those 
who  do,  and  sustain,  hi  all  ways  possible,  the  nation's  cause. 
Good  citizenship  implies  constant  readiness  to  obey  our  country's 
call. 

Less  dangerous,  less  glorious,  rarely  demanding  the  last 
sacrifice,  the  time  of  peace  is  no  less  insistent  than  the  exceptional 
time  of  war  hi  its  demands  for  good  citizenship.  How  shall  a 
man,  hi  time  of  peace,  fulfil  Lowell's  requirement  of  being  a 
useful  citizen?  He  may  do  it  in  many  ways,  for  usefulness  as  a 
citizen  is  not  confined,  by  any  means,  to  public  office,  although 
it  must,  in  some  form  or  other,  promote  the  general  as  distin- 
guished from  the  individual  good.  A  man  may  be  a  good  citizen 
in  the  ordinary  sense  by  fulfilling  the  fundamental  conditions  of 
honest  labor,  caring  for  his  family,  observing  law,  and  expressing 
his  opinion  upon  governmental  measures  at  the  time  of  election. 
But  this  does  not  make  him  a  good  citizen  in  the  larger  sense  of 
usefulness.  To  be  a  useful  citizen,  he  must  do  something  for 
the  public  service  which  is  over  and  above  his  work  for  himself 
or  his  family.  It  may  be  performed — this  public  service — through 
the  medium  of  the  man's  profession  or  occupation,  or  wholly 
apart  and  aside  from  it.  This  does  not  mean  that  the  mere  pro- 
duction of  a  great  work  of  art  or  literature  which  may  be  a  joy 
and  benefaction  to  humanity  necessarily  involves  the  idea  of 
public  service  in  the  sense  in  which  we  are  considering  it  here. 
It  may  or  it  may  not  do  so.  Turner's  art  is  a  great  possession  for 
the  world  to  have,  but  his  bequest  to  the  National  Gallery  was  a 
public  service.  Regnault's  portrait  of  Prim  was  a  noble  picture, 
but  the  artist's  death  as  a  soldier  hi  defence  of  Paris  was  the 
highest  public  service.  The  literature  of  the  English  language 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  227 

would  be  much  poorer  if  Edgar  Allan  Poe  had  not  lived, — his 
verse,  his  prose,  his  art  could  ill  be  spared  when  the  accounts  of 
the  nineteenth  century  are  made  up, — yet  it  would  be  impossible 
to  say  that  Poe  was  a  useful  citizen,  highly  as  we  may  rate  and 
ought  to  rate  his  strange  genius.  On  the  other  hand,  Walt  Whit- 
man, who  consecrated  so  much  of  his  work  as  a  poet  to  his 
country,  was  eminently  a  useful  citizen  of  high  patriotism,  for  he 
labored  in  the  hospitals  and  among  the  soldiers  to  help  his 
country  and  his  fellowmen  without  any  thought  of  self  or  self- 
interest,  or  even  of  his  art.  So,  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  was  a 
great  and  useful  citizen,  as  well  as  a  great  writer  and  poet,  giving 
freely  of  his  tune  and  thought  and  fame  to  moulding  opinion  and 
to  the  service  of  his  country.  The  same  may  be  said  of  Holmes 
and  of  Longfellow,  of  Whittier  and  of  Lowell,  of  Bancroft  and 
of  Motley.  In  any  event,  their  work  would  have  taken  high 
place  in  the  literature  of  the  United  States  and  of  the  English- 
speaking  people;  in  any  event  it  would  have  brought  pleasure  to 
mankind,  and,  in  Dr.  Johnson's  phrase,  would  have  helped  us  to 
enjoy  life  or  taught  us  to  endure  it.  But  over  and  above  their 
work,  they  were  useful  citizens  in  a  high  degree.  Their  art  was 
ever  at  the  service  of  their  country,  of  a  great  cause,  and  of  their 
fellowmen.  They  helped  to  direct  and  create  public  opinion,  and 
in  the  hour  of  stress  they  sustained  the  national  cause  with  all  the 
great  strength  which  their  fame  and  talents  gave  them.  With 
Winthrop,  their  watchword  was:  "Our  country, — whether 
bounded  by  the  St.  John's  or  the  Sabine,  or  however  otherwise 
bounded  or  described,  and,  be  the  measurement  more  or  less, — 
still  our  country." 

The  poet  and  the  artist,  the  scholar  and  the  man  of  letters 
are,  perhaps,  as  remote  in  their  lives  and  pursuits  from  the 
generally  recognized  paths  of  public  service  as  any  men  in  a 
community,  yet  these  few  examples  show  not  only  what  they 
have  done,  but  also  what  they  can  do,  and  how  they  have  met 
the  responsibilities  which  their  high  intellectual  gifts  and  large 
influence  imposed  upon  them.  There  are  also  professions  which 
involve  in  their  pursuit  public  service  of  a  very  noble  kind. 
Clergymen  and  physicians  give  freely  to  the  public,  to  their 


228  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

country,  and  to  the  community  in  which  they  live,  their  time, 
their  money,  then*  skill,  their  influence,  and  their  sympathy. 
It  is  all  done  for  others,  without  hope  or  thought  of  self-interest 
or  reward.  It  is  all  done  so  naturally,  so  much  in  the  usual  course 
of  their  activities,  that  the  world  scarcely  notes,  and  certainly 
does  not  stop  to  realize,  that  the  great  surgeon  exercising  his 
skill,  which  will  command  any  sum  from  the  rich,  without  money 
and  without  price  for  the  benefit  of  the  poor  in  the  hospitals, 
or  the  clergyman  laboring  among  the  miseries  of  the  city  slums, 
is  doing  public  service  of  the  highest  kind,  and  is  preeminently 
the  useful  citizen  who  goes  beyond  the  limits  of  personal  or 
family  interest  to  work  for  the  general  good — to  promote  the 
public  welfare  in  every  possible  way. 

The  man  of  business  who  devotes  his  surplus  wealth  to  the 
promotion  of  education  or  of  art,  or  the  alleviation  of  suffering,  is 
doing  public  service.  So,  too,  among  businessmen  and  lawyers 
and  journalists,  among  the  men  engaged  in  the  most  energetic 
and  active  pursuits,  we  find  those  who  are  always  ready  to  serve 
on  committees  to  raise  money  for  charitable  or  public  purposes, 
to  advance  important  measures  of  legislation,  and  to  reform  the 
evils  which  are  especially  rife  in  great  municipalities.  To  do  this 
they  give  then-  money,  as  well  as  their  time  and  strength,  which 
are  of  more  value  than  money,  to  objects  wholly  outside  the 
labors  by  which  they  support  themselves  or  their  families,  or 
gratify  then*  own  tastes  or  ambitions.  In  this  fashion  they  meet 
the  test  of  what  constitutes  usefulness  in  a  citizen  by  rendering 
to  the  country,  to  the  public,  and  to  their  fellow- citizens,  service 
which  has  no  personal  reward  hi  it,  but  which  advances  the  good 
of  others  and  contributes  to  the  welfare  of  the  community. 

Thus,  hi  divers  ways,  only  indicated  here,  are  men  of  all  con- 
ditions and  occupations  able  to  render  service  and  benefit  their 
fellow- citizens.  But  all  these  ways  so  far  suggested  are,  however 
beneficial,  indirect  as  compared  with  those  usually  associated 
in  everyone's  mind  with  the  idea  of  public  service.  When  we 
use  the  word  "citizen,"  or  "citizenship,"  the  first  thought  is  of 
the  man  in  relation  to  the  state,  as  the  very  word  itself  implies. 
It  is  in  this  connection  that  we  first  think  of  service  when  we 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  229 

speak  of  a  public-spirited  or  useful  citizen.  There  are  many  other 
public  services,  as  has  been  said,  just  as  valuable,  just  as  desir- 
able, very  often  more  immediately  beneficial  to  humanity  than 
those  rendered  directly  to  the  state  or  to  public  affairs,  but  there 
is  no  other  which  is  quite  so  imperative,  quite  so  near,  quite  so 
obvious  in  the  way  of  duty  as  the  performance  of  the  functions 
belonging  to  each  man  as  a  member  of  the  state.  In  our  country 
this  is  more  acutely  the  case  than  anywhere  else,  for  this  is  a 
democracy,  and  the  government  depends  upon  the  action  of  the 
people  themselves.  We  have  the  government,  municipal,  state, 
or  national,  which  we  make  ourselves.  If  it  is  good,  it  is  because 
we  make  it  so.  If  it  is  bad,  we  may  think  it  is  not  what  we  want, 
and  that  we  are  not  responsible  for  it,  but  it  is  none  the  less  just 
what  it  is  simply  because  we  will  not  take  the  trouble  necessary 
to  improve  it.  There  is  no  greater  fallacy  than  the  comfortable 
statement  so  frequently  heard,  that  we  owe  misgovernment, 
when  it  occurs  anywhere,  to  the  politicians.  If  the  politicians 
are  bad,  and  yet  have  power,  it  is  because  we  give  it  to  them. 
They  are  not  a  force  of  nature  with  which  there  is  no  con- 
tending; they  are  of  our  own  creation,  and,  if  we  disapprove  of 
them  and  yet  leave  them  in  power,  it  is  because  we  do  not  care  to 
take  the  trouble,  sometimes  the  excessive  trouble,  needful  to  be 
rid  of  them.  People  in  this  country,  as  in  other  countries,  and  as 
in  all  periods  of  history,  have,  as  a  rule,  the  government  they 
deserve.  The  politicians,  so  commonly  denounced  as  a  class, 
sometimes  justly  and  sometimes  unjustly,  have  only  the  advan- 
tage of  taking  more  pains  than  others  to  get  what  they  want,  and 
to  hold  power  in  public  affairs.  To  this  the  reply  is  always  made 
that  the  average  man  engaged  in  business,  or  in  a  profession,  has 
not  the  tune  to  give  to  politics  which  the  professional  politician 
devotes  to  it.  That  excuse  begs  the  question.  If  the  average 
man,  active,  and  constantly  occupied  in  his  own  affairs,  cannot 
find  time  to  choose  the  men  he  desires  to  represent  him  and 
perform  his  public  business  for  him,  then  either  democracy  is  a 
failure,  or  else  he  can  find  time  if  he  chooses ;  and,  if  he  does  not 
choose,  he  has  no  right  to  complain.  But  democracy  is  not  a 
failure.  After  all  allowances  and  deductions  are  made,  it  is  the 


*3<i  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

best  form  of  government  in  the  world  today,  and  better  than  any 
of  its  predecessors.  The  fault  is  not  in  the  system,  even  if  there 
are  hi  it,  as  in  all  other  things  human,  shortcomings  and  failures, 
but  in  those  who  operate  the  system;  and,  in  a  democracy,  those 
who  in  the  last  analysis  operate  the  system  are  all  the  people. 
It  must  always  be  remembered,  also,  that  in  representative 
government  all  the  people,  and  not  some  of  the  people,  are  to  be 
represented.  In  a  country  so  vast  in  area  and  so  large  in  popula- 
tion as  the  United  States,  constituencies  are  very  diverse  in 
their  qualities  and  there  are  many  elements.  Some  constituencies 
are  truly  represented  by  men  very  alien  to  the  standards  and 
aspirations  of  other  constituencies.  All,  however,  are  entitled 
to  representation,  and  the  aggregate  representation  stands  for 
the  whole  people.  If  the  representation  in  the  aggregate  is 
sound,  and  honestly  representative,  then  the  theory  of  democracy 
is  carried  out,  and  the  quality  of  the  representation  depends  on 
the  people  represented. 

There  are  two  things,  then,  to  be  determined  by  the  people 
themselves — the  general  policy  of  the  government,  and  the  per- 
sons who  are  to  carry  that  policy  into  effect  and  to  perform  the 
work  of  administration.  To  attain  the  first  object,  those  who 
are  pledged  to  one  policy  or  another  must  be  elected,  and  the  per- 
sons thus  united  in  support  of  certain  general  principles  of  policy 
or  government  constitute  a  political  party.  The  second  object, 
the  choice  of  suitable  persons  as  representatives  of  a  given  polit- 
ical party,  must  be  reached  by  all  the  people  who  support  that 
party  taking  part  in  the  selection.  In  the  first  case,  the  general 
policy  is  settled  by  the  election  of  a  party  to  power;  in  the 
second,  the  individual  representative  is  picked  out  by  his  fel- 
low-members of  the  same  party. 

This,  hi  broad  terms,  describes  the  field  for  the  exertions  of 
the  citizen  in  the  domain  of  politics,  and  the  methods  by  which 
he  can  make  his  exertions  most  effective.  I  am  aware  that  in 
this  description  I  have  assumed  the  existence  of  political  parties 
as  not  only  necessary  but  also  desirable.  This  is  not  the  place 
to  enter  into  a  history  or  discussion  of  the  party  system.  Suffice 
it  to  say  here  that  all  experience  shows  that  representative 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  331 

government  has  been  a  full  success  only  among  the  English- 
speaking  people  of  the  world,  with  whom  a  system  of  a  party 
of  government  and  a  party  of  opposition  has  always  prevailed. 
In  other  countries  the  failures  or  serious  shortcomings  of  rep- 
resentative government  are  attributed  by  good  judges  and 
observers,  both  native  and  foreign,  largely  to  the  absence  of  the 
party  system  as  practised  by  us.  The  alternative  of  two  parties, 
one  carrying  on  the  government  and  the  other  in  opposition 
ready  to  take  its  place,  is  the  system  of  groups  or  factions  and 
consequent  coalitions  among  two  or  more  of  the  groups  in  order 
to  obtain  a  parliamentary  majority.  Government  by  group- 
coalitions  has  proved  to  be  irresponsible,  unstable,  capricious, 
and  short-lived.  Under  the  system  of  two  parties,  continuity, 
experience  and,  best  of  all,  responsibility,  without  which  all  else 
is  worthless,  have  been  obtained.  That  there  are  evils  in  the 
party  system  carried  to  the  extreme  of  blind  or  unscrupulous 
partisanship,  no  one  denies.  But  this  is  a  comparative  world, 
and  the  party  system  is  shown,  by  the  experience  of  two  hundred 
years,  to  be  the  best  yet  devised  for  the  management  and  move- 
ment of  a  representative  government.  Nothing,  in  fact,  can  be 
more  shallow,  or  show  a  more  profound  ignorance  of  history, 
than  the  proposition,  so  often  reiterated  as  if  it  were  a  truism, 
that  a  political  party  is  something  wholly  evil,  and  that  to  call 
anyone  a  party  man  is  sufficient  to  condemn  him.  Every  great 
measure,  every  great  war,  every  great  reform,  which  together 
have  made  the  history  of  England  since  the  days  of  William  of 
Orange,  and  of  the  United  States  since  the  adoption  of  the  Con- 
stitution, have  been  carried  on  and  carried  through  by  an 
organized  political  party.  Until  some  better  way  is  discovered 
and  proved  to  be  better,  the  English-speaking  people  will  con- 
tinue to  use  the  party  system  with  which,  on  the  whole,  they  have 
done  so  well  so  far,  and  the  citizen  aiming  at  usefulness  must 
therefore  accept  the  party  system  as  one  of  the  conditions  under 
which  he  is  to  act. 

The  most  effective  way  in  which  to  act  is  through  the  medium 
of  a  party,  and  as  a  member  of  one  of  the  two  great  parties, 
because  in  this  way  a  man  can  make  his  influence  felt,  not  only 


232  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

in  the  final  choice  between  parties,  but  in  the  selection  of  candi- 
dates and  in  the  determination  of  party  politics  as  well.  This  does 
not  mean  that  a  man  can  be  effective  only  by  allying  himself  with 
a  party,  but  that  he  can  in  that  way  be  most  effective,  both  in 
action  and  in  influence.  Many  there  must  be  unattached  to  either 
of  the  parties,  whose  mental  condition  is  such  that  they  can 
neither  submit  to  discipline  nor  yield  nor  compromise  their  own 
views  in  order  to  promote  the  general  principles  in  which  they 
believe,  all  of  which  conditions  or  sacrifices  are  necessary  in  order 
to  maintain  party  organization.  These  are  the  voters  who  shift 
their  votes  if  not  their  allegiance;  and,  if  it  were  not  for  them, 
one  party,  as  politics  are  usually  hereditary,  would  remain 
almost  continually  in  power,  and  the  results  would  be  extremely 
unfortunate.  It  is  the  necessity  of  appealing  to  these  voters 
which  exercises  a  restraining  effect  upon  the  great  party  organiza- 
tions. But  these  men  who  vote  as  they  please  at  the  minute, 
and  yet  usually  describe  themselves  by  a  party  name,  and  as  a 
rule  act  with  one  party  or  the  other,  must  be  carefully  distin- 
guished from  the  professional  independent,  whose  independence 
consists  in  nothing  but  bitterly  opposing  and  seeking  to  defeat 
one  party  at  all  times.  This  independent  is  the  worst  of  partisans, 
for  he  is  guided  solely  by  hatred  of  a  party  or  of  individuals, 
and  never  supports  anything  because  he  believes  in  it,  but  merely 
as  an  instrument  of  destruction  or  revenge.  Equally  ineffective, 
even  if  less  malevolent,  is  the  perpetual  fault-finder,  whether  in 
conversation  or  in  the  newspapers.  He  calls  himself  a  critic, 
blandly  unaware  that  unrelieved  invective  is  no  more  criticism 
than  unrelieved  laudation,  and  that  true  criticism,  whether  of  a 
book,  a  work  of  art,  a  public  measure,  or  a  public  man,  seeks  to 
point  out  merits  as  well  as  defects,  in  order  to  balance  one  against 
the  other,  and  thus  assist  in  the  proper  conduct  of  life.  The  real 
and  honest  critic  and  the  genuine  independent  in  politics  are  most 
valuable,  for  they  are  engaged  in  the  advancement  of  principles 
in  which  they  believe,  and  will  aid  those  and  work  with  those 
who  are  laboring  toward  the  same  ends.  But  the  professional 
independent,  whose  sole  purpose  is  to  defeat  some  one  party 
or  certain  specified  persons  whom  he  hates,  no  matter  what  that 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  233 

party  or  those  persons  may  be  doing,  the  critic  who  only  finds 
fault,  the  professional  philanthropist  or  reformer  who  uses  his 
philanthropy  or  reform  solely  to  vilify  his  country  or  his  gov- 
ernment, and  to  bring  shame  or  sorrow  to  some  of  his  fellow- 
citizens,  so  that  his  personal  malice  may  be  gratified, — these 
men  advance  nothing,  for  their  attitude  is  pure  negation,  and 
they  generally  do  great  harm  to  any  cause  which  they  espouse. 
They  are  not  useful  citizens;  but,  as  a  rule,  to  the  extent  of 
their  power,  which  luckily  is  not  great,  they  are  positively 
injurious. 

The  serious  difficulty,  however,  is  not  with  those  who  give 
a  false  direction  to  their  political  activities,  but  with  the  political 
indifference  which  most  good  citizens  exhibit,  except  on  rare 
occasions  when  some  great  question  is  at  issue  which  stirs  the 
entire  community  to  its  depths.  Yet  it  is  in  the  ordinary  every- 
day affairs  of  politics  that  the  attention  of  good  citizens  is  most 
necessary.  It  is  then  that  those  who  constitute  the  undesirable 
and  objectionable  elements  get  control,  for  they  are  always  on 
the  watch,  and  to  defeat  them  it  is  essential  that  those  who 
desire  good  and  honest  government  should  be  on  the  watch,  too. 
The  idea  that  they  cannot  spare  the  time  without  detriment  to 
their  own  affairs  is  a  mistake.  The  time  actually  consumed  in 
going  to  a  caucus  or  a  convention  is  not  a  serious  loss.  What  is 
most  needed  is  to  follow  the  course  of  public  affairs  closely,  to 
understand  what  is  being  done,  and  what  the  various  candidates 
represent;  and  then,  when  the  time  for  the  vote  in  the  caucus 
or  at  the  polls  arrives,  a  citizen  interested  only  in  good  govern- 
ment, or  in  the  promotion  of  a  given  policy,  knows  what  he  wants 
and  can  act  intelligently.  His  weakness  arises,  almost  invariably, 
from  the  fact  that  he  does  not  rouse  himself  until  the  last  minute, 
that  he  does  not  know  just  what  he  wants  or  with  whom  to 
act,  and  that,  therefore,  he  is  taken  by  surprise  and  beaten  by 
those  who  know  exactly  what  they  want  and  precisely  what  they 
mean  to  do.  Here,  then,  is  where  the  useful  citizen  is  most 
needed  in  politics,  and  his  first  duty  is  to  understand  his  subject, 
which  a  little  thought  and  observation  day  by  day  will  enable 
him  to  do.  Let  him  inform  himself,  and  keep  always  informed, 


234"  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

as  to  men  and  measures,  and  he  will  find  that  he  has  ample  time 
to  give  when  the  moment  of  action  arrives. 

No  man  can  hope  to  be  a  useful  citizen  in  the  broadest  sense, 
in  the  United  States,  unless  he  takes  a  continuous  and  intelligent 
interest  in  politics  and  a  full  share,  not  only  in  the  elections,  but 
also  in  the  primary  operations  which  determine  the  choice  of 
candidates.  For  this  everyone  has  time  enough,  and,  if  he  says 
that  he  has  not,  it  is  because  he  is  indifferent  when  he  ought  to  be 
intensely  and  constantly  interested.  If  he  follows  public  affairs 
from  day  to  day,  and,  thus  informed,  acts  with  his  friends  and 
those  who  think  as  he  does  at  the  caucus  and  the  polls,  he  will 
make  his  influence  fully  felt  and  will  meet  completely  the  test 
of  good  citizenship.  It  is  not  essential  to  take  office.  For  not 
doing  so,  the  excuse  of  lack  of  time  and  the  demands  of  more 
immediate  private  interest  may  be  valid.  But  it  would  be  well  if 
every  man  could  have,  for  a  short  period,  at  least,  some  experi- 
ence in  the  actual  work  of  government  in  his  city,  state,  or  nation, 
even  if  he  has  no  intention  of  following  a  political  career.  Such 
an  experience  does  more  to  broaden  a  man's  knowledge  of  the 
difficulties  of  public  administration  than  anything  else.  It 
helps  him  to  understand  how  he  can  practically  attain  that 
which  he  thinks  is  best  for  the  state,  and,  most  important  of  all, 
it  enables  him  to  act  with  other  men,  and  to  judge  justly  those 
who  are  doing  the  work  of  public  life.  Public  men,  it  is  true, 
seek  the  offices  they  hold  in  order  to  gratify  then-  ambition, 
or  because  they  feel  that  they  can  do  good  work  in  the  world 
in  that  way.  But  it  is  too  often  overlooked  that  the  great  ma- 
jority of  those  who  hold  public  office  are  governed  by  a  desire  to 
do  what  is  best  for  the  country  or  the  state,  as  they  understand 
it.  Ambition  may  be  the  motive  which  takes  most  men  into 
public  life,  but  the  work  which  is  done  by  these  men  after  they 
attain  their  ambition  is,  as  a  rule,  disinterested  and  public- 
spirited.  I  have  lately  seen  the  proposition  advanced  that,  in 
the  last  forty  years,  American  public  men,  with  scarcely  an 
exception,  have  said  nothing  important  because  they  were  so 
ignorant  of  their  subject,  and  have  done  nothing  of  moment 
because  the  country  was  really  governed  by  professors,  men  of 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  235 

business,  scientists,  presidents  of  learned  societies,  and  especially 
by  gentlemen  who  feel  that  they  ought  to  be  in  high  office,  but 
have  never  been  able  to  get  any  sufficient  number  of  their 
fellow-citizens  to  agree  with  them  in  that  feeling.  With  the 
exception  of  the  last,  all  these  different  classes  in  the  community 
exercise  a  strong  influence  on  public  opinion,  the  course  of  public 
affairs,  and  public  policy.  Yet  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  the 
absolute  conduct  of  government  is  in  the  hands  of  those  who  hold 
high  representative  or  administrative  office. 

The  personal  qualities  and  individual  abilities  of  public 
men  have  a  profound  effect  upon  the  measures  and  poh'cies  which 
make  the  history  and  determine  the  fate  of  the  nation.  Often 
they  originate  the  measures  or  the  poh'cies,  and  they  always 
modify  and  formulate  them.  Therefore  it  is  essential  that  every 
man  who  desires  to  be  a  useful  citizen  should  not  only  take  part 
in  moulding  public  sentiment,  in  selecting  candidates,  and  in 
winning  elections  for  the  party  or  the  cause  in  which  he  believes, 
but  he  should  also  be  familiar  with  the  characters,  abilities,  and 
records  of  the  men  who  must  be  the  instruments  by  which  the 
policies  are  to  be  carried  out  and  the  government  administered. 
There  are  many  ways,  therefore,  in  which  men  may  benefit 
and  aid  their  fellowmen,  and  serve  the  state  in  which  they  live, 
but  it  is  open  to  all  men  alike  to  help  to  govern  the  country 
and  direct  its  course  along  the  passing  years.  In  the  performance 
of  this  duty  in  the  ways  I  have  tried  to  indicate,  any  man  can 
attain  to  good  citizenship  of  the  highest  usefulness.  It  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  our  success  as  a  nation  depends  upon  the 
useful  citizens  who  act  intelligently  and  effectively  in  politics. 


236  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

WHAT  "AMERICANISM"  MEANS1 
THEODORE  ROOSEVELT 

[Theodore  Roosevelt  (1858 )  was  graduated  from  Harvard  Univer- 
sity in  1880.  In  this  same  year  he  entered  public  life  as  a  member  of  the 
New  York  legislature.  President  Harrison  appointed  him  United  States 
Civil  Service  Commissioner.  Later  he  became  assistant  secretary  of  the 
navy,  a  position  which  he  resigned  when  the  Spanish- American  War  began, 
to  organize  the  famous  cavalry  regiment,  the  "Rough  Riders."  On  his 
return  from  Cuba,  he  was  elected  governor  of  New  York.  In  1900  he 
was  elected  Vice-President  of  the  United  States,  and  succeeded  to  the 
Presidency  on  the  death  of  President  McKinley.  In  1904  he  was  elected 
President  to  succeed  himself.  In  1912  he  was  defeated  for  the  Presidency  as 
the  candidate  of  the  Progressive  party.  Among  the  policies  which  are  asso- 
ciated with  his  name,  such,  for  instance,  as  the  "square  deal"  between  capital 
and  labor,  and  "social  justice"  for  the  wage-earner,  "Americanism"  has 
always  been  conspicuous.] 

Patriotism  was  once  defined  as  "the  last  refuge  of  a  scoundrel;" 
and  somebody  has  recently  remarked  that  when  Dr.  Johnson 
gave  this  definition  he  was  ignorant  of  the  infinite  possibilities 
contained  in  the  word  "reform."  Of  course  both  gibes  were 
quite  justifiable,  in  so  far  as  they  were  aimed  at  people  who  use 
noble  names  to  cloak  base  purposes.  Equally,  of  course,  the 
man  shows  little  wisdom  and  a  low  sense  of  duty  who  fails  to 
see  that  love  of  country  is  one  of  the  elemental  virtues,  even 
though  scoundrels  play  upon  it  for  their  own  selfish  ends;  and, 
inasmuch  as  abuses  continually  grow  up  in  civic  life  as  in  all 
other  kinds  of  life,  the  statesman  is  indeed  a  weakling  who 
hesitates  to  reform  these  abuses  because  the  word  "reform" 
is  often  on  the  lips  of  men  who  are  silly  or  dishonest. 

What  is  true  of  patriotism  and  reform  is  true  also  of  American- 
ism. There  are  plenty  of  scoundrels  always  ready  to  try  to  be- 
little reform  movements  or  to  bolster  up  existing  iniquities  in 
the  name  of  Americanism;  but  this  does  not  alter  the  fact  that 
the  man  who  can  do  most  in  this  country  is  and  must  be  the 
man  whose  Americanism  is  most  sincere  and  intense.  Outrag- 

!From  American  Ideals  and  Other  Essays.  (Copyright,  1897,  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.) 
Reprinted  by  permission. 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  237 

ecus  though  it  is  to  use  a  noble  idea  as  the  cloak  for  evil,  it  is 
still  worse  to  assail  the  noble  idea  itself  because  it  can  thus  be 
used.  The  men  who  do  iniquity  in  the  name  of  patriotism,  of 
reform,  of  Americanism,  are  merely  one  small  division  of  the 
class  that  has  always  existed,  and  will  always  exist — the  class  of 
hypocrites  and  demagogues,  the  class  that  is  always  prompt  to 
steal  the  watchwords  of  righteousness  and  use  them  in  the 
interests  of  evil-doing. 

The  stoutest  and  truest  Americans  are  the  very  men  who  have 
the  least  sympathy  with  the  people  who  invoke  the  spirit  of 
Americanism  to  aid  what  is  vicious  in  our  government,  or  to 
throw  obstacles  in  the  way  of  those  who  strive  to  reform  it. 
It  is  contemptible  to  oppose  a  movement  for  good  because  that 
movement  has  already  succeeded  somewhere  else,  or  to  cham- 
pion an  existing  abuse  because  our  people  have  always  been 
wedded  to  it.  To  appeal  to  national  prejudice  against  a  given 
reform  movement  is  in  every  way  unworthy  and  silly.  It  is  as 
childish  to  denounce  free  trade  because  England  has  adopted  it 
as  to  advocate  it  for  the  same  reason.  It  is  eminently  proper,  in 
dealing  with  the  tariff,  to  consider  the  effect  of  tariff  legislation 
in  time  past  upon  other  nations  as  well  as  the  effect  upon  our 
own;  but  in  drawing  conclusions  it  is  in  the  last  degree  foolish 
to  try  to  excite  prejudice  against  one  system  because  it  is  in 
vogue  in  some  given  country,  or  to  try  to  excite  prejudice  in  its 
favor  because  the  economists  of  that  country  have  found  that 
it  was  suited  to  their  own  peculiar  needs.  In  attempting  to  solve 
our  difficult  problem  of  municipal  government  it  is  mere  folly 
to  refuse  to  profit  by  whatever  is  good  in  the  examples  of  Man- 
chester and  Berlin  because  these  cities  are  foreign,  exactly  as  it 
is  mere  folly  blindly  to  copy  their  examples  without  reference  to 
our  own  totally  different  conditions.  As  for  the  absurdity  of 
declaiming  against  civil-service  reform,  for  instance,  as  "Chinese," 
because  written  examinations  have  been  used  in  China,  it  would 
be  quite  as  wise  to  declaim  against  gunpowder  because  it  was 
first  utilized  by  the  same  people.  In  short,  the  man  who,  whether 
from  mere  dull  fatuity  or  from  an  active  interest  in  misgovern- 
ment,  tries  to  appeal  to  American  prejudice  against  things  for- 


238  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

eign,  so  as  to  induce  Americans  to  oppose  any  measure  for  good, 
should  be  looked  on  by  his  fellow-countrymen  with  the  heartiest 
contempt.  So  much  for  the  men  who  appeal  to  the  spirit  of 
Americanism  to  sustain  us  in  wrong-doing.  But  we  must  never 
let  our  contempt  for  these  men  blind  us  to  the  nobility  of  the 
idea  which  they  strive  to  degrade. 

We  Americans  have  many  grave  problems  to  solve,  many 
threatening  evils  to  fight,  and  many  deeds  to  do,  if,  as  we  hope 
and  believe,  we  have  the  wisdom,  the  strength,  the  courage,  and 
the  virtue  to  do  them.  But  we  must  face  facts  as  they  are.  We 
must  neither  surrender  ourselves  to  a  foolish  optimism,  nor 
succumb  to  a  timid  and  ignoble  pessimism.  Our  nation  is  that 
one  among  all  the  nations  of  the  earth  which  holds  in  its  hands 
the  fate  of  the  coming  years.  We  enjoy  exceptional  advantages, 
and  are  menaced  by  exceptional  dangers;  and  all  signs  indicate 
that  we  shall  either  fail  greatly  or  succeed  greatly.  I  firmly  be- 
lieve that  we  shall  succeed;  but  we  must  not  foolishly  blink  the 
danger  by  which  we  are  threatened,  for  that  is  the  way  to  fail. 
On  the  contrary,  we  must  soberly  set  to  work  to  find  out  all  we 
can  about  the  existence  and  extent  of  every  evil,  must  acknowl- 
edge it  to  be  such,  and  must  then  attack  it  with  unyielding  reso- 
lution. There  are  many  such  evils,  and  each  must  be  fought 
after  a  separate  fashion;  yet  there  is  one  quality  which  we  must 
bring  to  the  solution  of  every  problem — that  is,  an  intense  and 
fervid  Americanism.  We  shall  never  be  successful  over  the  dan- 
gers that  confront  us;  we  shall  never  achieve  true  greatness,  nor 
reach  the  lofty  ideal  which  the  founders  and  preservers  of  our 
mighty  Federal  Republic  have  set  before  us,  unless  we  are 
Americans  in  heart  and  soul,  in  spirit  and  purpose,  keenly 
alive  to  the  responsibility  implied  in  the  very  name  of  Ameri- 
can, and  proud  beyond  measure  of  the  glorious  privilege  of 
bearing  it. 

There  are  two  or  three  sides  to  the  question  of  Americanism, 
and  two  or  three  senses  in  which  the  word  "Americanism"  can 
be  used  to  express  the  antithesis  of  what  is  unwholesome  and 
undesirable.  In  the  first  place  we  wish  to  be  broadly  American 
and  national,  as  opposed  to  being  local  or  sectional.  We  do  not 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  239 

wish,  in  politics,  in  literature,  or  in  art,  to  develop  that  unwhole- 
some parochial  spirit,  that  over-exaltation  of  the  little  commu- 
nity at  the  expense  of  the  great  nation,  which  produces  what 
has  been  described  as  the  patriotism  of  the  village,  the  patriot- 
ism of  the  belfry.  Politically,  the  indulgence  of  this  spirit  was 
the  chief  cause  of  the  calamities  which  befell  the  ancient  repub- 
lics of  Greece,  the  medieval  republics  of  Italy,  and  the  petty 
states  of  Germany  as  it  was  in  the  last  century.  It  is  this  spirit 
of  provincial  patriotism,  this  inability  to  take  a  view  of  broad 
adhesion  to  the  whole  nation  that  has  been  the  chief  among  the 
causes  that  have  produced  such  anarchy  in  the  South  American 
states,  and  which  have  resulted  in  presenting  to  us,  not  one  great 
Spanish-American  federal  nation  stretching  from  the  Rio  Grande 
to  Cape  Horn,  but  a  squabbling  multitude  of  revolution-ridden 
states,  not  one  of  which  stands  even  in  the  second  rank  as  a 
power.  However,  politically  this  question  of  American  nation- 
ality has  been  settled  once  for  all.  We  are  no  longer  in  danger  of 
repeating  in  our  history  the  shameful  and  contemptible  disasters 
that  have  befallen  the  Spanish  possessions  on  this  continent 
since  they  threw  off  the  yoke  of  Spain.  Indeed  there  is,  all  through 
our  life,  very  much  less  of  this  parochial  spirit  than  there  was 
formerly.  Still  there  is  an  occasional  outcropping  here  and 
there;  and  it  is  just  as  well  that  we  should  keep  steadily  in  mind 
the  futility  of  talking  of  a  northern  literature  or  a  southern  litera- 
ture, an  eastern  or  a  western  school  of  art  or  science.  The 
Sewanee  Review  and  the  Overland  Monthly,  like  the  Century  and 
the  Atlantic,  do  good  work,  not  merely  for  one  section  of  the 
country,  but  for  American  literature  as  a  whole.  Their  success 
really  means  as  much  for  Americans  who  happen  to  live  in  New 
York  or  Boston  as  for  Americans  who  happen  to  live  in  the  Gulf 
States  or  on  the  Pacific  slope.  Joel  Chandler  Harris  is  emphati- 
cally a  national  writer;  so  is  Mark  Twain.  They  do  not  write 
merely  for  Georgia  or  Missouri,  any  more  than  for  Illinois  or 
Connecticut;  they  write  as  Americans  and  for  all  people  who 
can  read  English.  It  is  of  very  great  consequence  that  we  should 
have  a  full  and  ripe  literary  development  in  the  United  States, 
but  it  is  not  of  the  least  consequence  whether  New  York,  or 


240  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

Boston,  or  Chicago,  or  San  Francisco  becomes  the  literary  center 
of  the  United  States. 

There  is  a  second  side  to  this  question  of  a  broad  American- 
ism, however.  The  patriotism  of  the  village  or  the  belfry  is 
bad,  but  the  lack  of  all  patriotism  is  even  worse.  There  are 
philosophers  who  assure  us  that,  in  the  future,  patriotism  will 
be  regarded  not  as  a  virtue  at  all,  but  merely  as  a  mental  stage 
in  the  journey  toward  a  state  of  feeling  when  our  patriotism  will 
include  the  whole  human  race  and  all  the  world.  This  may  be 
so;  but  the  age  of  which  these  philosophers  speak  is  still  several 
aeons  distant.  In  fact,  philosophers  of  this  type  are  so  very 
advanced  that  they  are  of  no  practical  service  to  the  present 
generation.  It  may  be  that  in  ages  so  remote  that  we  cannot 
now  understand  any  of  the  feelings  of  those  who  will  dwell  in 
them,  patriotism  will  no  longer  be  regarded  as  a  virtue,  exactly 
as  it  may  be  that  in  those  remote  ages  people  will  look  down 
upon  and  disregard  monogamic  marriage;  but  as  things  now 
are  and  have  been  for  two  or  three  thousand  years  past,  and 
are  likely  to  be  for  two  or  three  thousand  years  to  come,  the 
words  "home"  and  "country"  mean  a  great  deal.  Nor  do  they 
show  any  tendency  to  lose  their  significance.  At  present,  trea- 
son, like  adultery,  ranks  as  one  of  the  worst  of  all  possible  crimes. 

One  may  fall  very  far  short  of  treason  and  yet  be  an  undesir- 
able citizen  in  the  community.  The  man  who  becomes  Euro- 
peanized,  who  loses  his  power  of  doing  good  work  on  this  side 
of  the  water,  and  who  loses  his  love  for  his  native  land,  is  not  a 
traitor;  but  he  is  a  silly  and  undesirable  citizen.  He  is  as  em- 
phatically a  noxious  element  in  our  body  politic  as  is  the  man 
who  comes  here  from  abroad  and  remains  a  foreigner.  Nothing 
will  more  quickly  or  more  surely  disqualify  a  man  from  doing 
good  work  in  the  world  than  the  acquirement  of  that  flaccid 
habit  of  mind  which  its  possessors  style  cosmopolitanism. 

It  is  not  only  necessary  to  Americanize  the  immigrants  of 
foreign  birth  who  settle  among  us,  but  it  is  even  more  necessary 
for  those  among  us  who  are  by  birth  and  descent  already  Ameri- 
cans not  to  throw  away  our  birthright,  and,  with  incredible  and 
contemptible  folly,  wander  back  to  bow  down  before  the  alien 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  241 

gods  whom  our  forefathers  forsook.  It  is  hard  to  believe  that 
there  is  any  necessity  to  warn  Americans  that,  when  they  seek 
to  model  themselves  on  the  lines  of  other  civilizations,  they 
make  themselves  the  butts  of  all  right-thinking  men;  and  yet 
the  necessity  certainly  exists  to  give  this  warning  to  many  of 
our  citizens  who  pride  themselves  on  their  standing  in  the  world 
of  art  and  letters,  or,  perchance,  on  what  they  would  style  their 
social  leadership  in  the  community.  It  is  always  better  to  be  an 
original  than  an  imitation,  even  when  the  imitation  is  of  some- 
thing better  than  the  original;  but  what  shall  we  say  of  the  fool 
who  is  content  to  be  an  imitation  of  something  worse?  Even  if 
the  weaklings  who  seek  to  be  other  than  Americans  were  right 
in  deeming  other  nations  to  be  better  than  their  own,  the  fact 
yet  remains  that  to  be  a  first-class  American  is  fifty-fold  better 
than  to  be  a  second-class  imitation  of  a  Frenchman  or  English- 
man. As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  those  of  our  countrymen  who 
do  believe  in  American  inferiority  are  always  individuals  who, 
however  cultivated,  have  some  organic  weakness  in  their  moral 
or  mental  make-up;  and  the  great  mass  of  our  people,  who  are 
robustly  patriotic,  and  who  have  sound,  healthy  minds,  are 
justified  in  regarding  these  feeble  renegades  with  a  half-impa- 
tient and  half-amused  scorn. 

We  believe  hi  waging  relentless  war  on  rank-growing  evils 
of  all  kinds,  and  it  makes  no  difference  to  us  if  they  happen  to 
be  of  purely  native  growth.  We  grasp  at  any  good,  no  matter 
whence  it  comes.  We  do  not  accept  the  evil  attendant  upon 
another  system  of  government  as  an  adequate  excuse  for  that 
attendant  upon  our  own;  the  fact  that  the  courtier  is  a  scamp 
does  not  render  the  demagogue  any  the  less  a  scoundrel.  But 
it  remains  true  that,  in  spite  of  all  our  faults  and  shortcomings, 
no  other  land  offers  such  glorious  possibilities  to  the  man  able 
to  take  advantage  of  them  as  does  ours;  it  remains  true  that 
no  one  of  our  people  can  do  any  work  really  worth  doing  unless 
he  does  it  primarily  as  an  American.  It  is  because  certain  classes 
of  our  people  still  retain  their  spirit  of  colonial  dependence  on, 
and  exaggerated  deference  to,  European  opinion,  that  they  fail 
to  accomplish  what  they  ought  to.  It  is  precisely  along  the  lines 
P 


242  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

where  we  have  worked  most  independently  that  we  have  accom- 
plished the  greatest  results;  and  it  is  in  those  professions  where 
there  has  been  no  servility  to,  but  merely  a  wise  profiting  by, 
foreign  experience,  that  we  have  produced  our  greatest  men. 
Our  soldiers  and  statesmen  and  orators;  our  explorers,  our 
wilderness-winners  and  commonwealth-builders;  the  men  who 
have  made  our  laws  and  seen  that  they  were  executed;  and  the 
other  men  whose  energy  and  ingenuity  have  created  our  marvel- 
ous material  prosperity — all  these  have  been  men  who  have 
drawn  wisdom  from  the  experience  of  every  age  and  nation, 
but  who  have  nevertheless  thought,  and  worked,  and  conquered, 
and  lived,  and  died,  purely  as  Americans;  and  on  the  whole  they 
have  done  better  work  than  has  been  done  in  any  other  country 
during  the  short  period  of  our  national  life. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  in  those  professions  where  our  people 
have  striven  hardest  to  mould  themselves  in  conventional  Euro- 
pean forms  that  they  have  succeeded  least;  and  this  holds  true 
to  the  present  day,  the  failure  being  of  course  most  conspicuous 
where  the  man  takes  up  his  abode  in  Europe;  where  he  becomes 
a  second-rate  European,  because  he  is  over-civilized,  over-sen- 
sitive, over-refined,  and  has  lost  the  hardihood  and  manly  cour- 
age by  which  alone  he  can  conquer  in  the  keen  struggle  of  our 
national  life.  Be  it  remembered,  too,  that  this  same  being  does 
not  really  become  a  European;  he  only  ceases  being  an  Ameri- 
can, and  becomes  nothing.  He  throws  away  a  great  prize  for 
the  sake  of  a  lesser  one,  and  does  not  even  get  the  lesser  one. 
The  painter  who  goes  to  Paris,  not  merely  to  get  two  or  three 
years'  thorough  training  in  his  art,  but  with  the  deliberate  pur- 
pose of  taking  up  his  abode  there,  and  with  the  intention  of  fol- 
lowing in  the  ruts  worn  deep  by  ten  thousand  earlier  travelers, 
instead  of  striking  off  to  rise  or  fall  on  a  new  line,  thereby  forfeits 
all  chance  of  doing  the  best  work.  He  must  content  himself 
with  aiming  at  that  kind  of  mediocrity  which  consists  in  doing 
fairly  well  what  has  already  been  done  better;  and  he  usually 
never  even  sees  the  grandeur  and  picturesqueness  lying  open 
before  the  eyes  of  every  man  who  can  read  the  book  of  America's 
past  and  the  book  of  America's  present.  Thus  it  is  with  the 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  343 

undersized  man  of  letters,  who  flees  his  country  because  he,  with 
his  delicate,  effeminate  sensitiveness,  finds  the  conditions  of  life 
on  this  side  of  the  water  crude  and  raw;  in  other  words,  because 
he  finds  that  he  cannot  play  a  man's  part  among  men,  and  so 
goes  where  he  will  be  sheltered  from  the  winds  that  harden 
stouter  souls.  This  emigre  may  write  graceful  and  pretty  verses, 
essays,  novels;  but  he  will  never  do  work  to  compare  with  that 
of  his  brother,  who  is  strong  enough  to  stand  on  his  own  feet, 
and  do  his  work  as  an  American.  Thus  it  is  with  the  scientist 
who  spends  his  youth  in  a  German  university,  and  can  thence- 
forth work  only  in  the  fields  already  fifty  times  furrowed  by  the 
German  plows.  Thus  it  is  with  that  most  foolish  of  parents 
who  sends  his  children  to  be  educated  abroad,  not  knowing — 
what  every  clear-sighted  man  from  Washington  and  Jay  down 
has  known — that  the  American  who  is  to  make  his  way  in 
America  should  be  brought  up  among  his  fellow  Americans.  It 
is  among  the  people  who  like  to  consider  themselves,  and,  in- 
deed, to  a  large  extent  are,  the  leaders  of  the  so-called  social 
world,  especially  in  some  of  the  northeastern  cities,  that  this 
colonial  habit  of  thought,  this  thoroughly  provincial  spirit  of 
admiration  for  things  foreign,  and  inability  to  stand  on  one's 
own  feet,  becomes  most  evident  and  most  despicable.  We 
thoroughly  believe  in  every  kind  of  honest  and  lawful  pleasure, 
so  long  as  the  getting  it  is  not  made  man's  chief  business;  and 
we  believe  heartily  in  the  good  that  can  be  done  by  men  of 
leisure  who  work  hard  in  their  leisure,  whether  at  politics  or 
philanthropy,  literature  or  art.  But  a  leisure  class  whose  leisure 
simply  means  idleness  is  a  curse  to  the  community,  and  in  so  far 
as  its  members  distinguish  themselves  chiefly  by  aping  the  worst — 
not  the  best — traits  of  similar  people  across  the  water,  they 
become  both  comic  and  noxious  elements  of  the  body  politic. 

The  third  sense  in  which  the  word  "Americanism"  may  be 
employed  is  with  reference  to  the  Americanizing  of  the  new- 
comers to  our  shores.  We  must  Americanize  them  in  every  way, 
in  speech,  in  political  ideas  and  principles,  and  in  their  way  of 
looking  at  the  relations  between  Church  and  State.  We  wel- 
come the  German  or  the  Irishman  who  becomes  an  American. 


244  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

We  have  no  use  for  the  German  or  Irishman  who  remains  such. 
We  do  not  wish  German- Americans  and  Irish- Americans  who 
figure  as  such  in  our  social  and  political  life;  we  want  only 
Americans,  and,  provided  they  are  such,  we  do  not  care  whether 
they  are  of  native  or  of  Irish  or  of  German  ancestry.  We  have 
no  room  in  any  healthy  American  community  for  a  German- 
American  vote  or  an  Irish-American  vote,  and  it  is  contemptible 
demagogy  to  put  planks  into  any  party  platform  with  the  pur- 
pose of  catching  such  a  vote.  We  have  no  room  for  any  people 
who  do  not  act  and  vote  simply  as  Americans,  and  as  nothing 
else.  Moreover,  we  have  as  little  use  for  people  who  carry  reli- 
gious prejudices  into  our  politics  as  for  those  who  carry  preju- 
dices of  caste  or  nationality.  We  stand  unalterably  in  favor  of 
the  public-school  system  in  its  entirety.  We  believe  that  the 
English,  and  no  other  language,  is  that  in  which  all  the  school 
exercises  should  be  conducted.  We  are  against  any  division  of 
the  school  fund,  and  against  any  appropriation  of  public  money 
for  sectarian  purposes.  We  are  against  any  recognition  what- 
ever by  the  state  in  any  shape  or  form  of  state-aided  parochial 
schools.  But  we  are  equally  opposed  to  any  discrimination  against 
or  for  a  man  because  of  his  creed.  We  demand  that  all  citizens, 
Protestant  and  Catholic,  Jew  and  Gentile,  shall  have  fair  treat- 
ment in  every  way;  that  all  alike  shall  have  their  rights  guaran- 
teed them.  The  very  reasons  that  make  us  unqualified  in  our 
opposition  to  state-aided  sectarian  schools  make  us  equally  bent 
that,  in  the  management  of  our  public  schools,  the  adherents  of 
each  creed  shall  be  given  exact  and  equal  justice,  wholly  without 
regard  to  their  religious  affiliations;  that  trustees,  superinten- 
dents, teachers,  scholars,  all  alike,  shall  be  treated  without  any 
reference  whatsoever  to  the  creed  they  profess.  We  maintain 
that  it  is  an  outrage,  in  voting  for  a  man  for  any  position,  whether 
state  or  national,  to  take  into  account  his  religious  faith,  pro- 
vided only  he  is  a  good  American.  When  a  secret  society  does 
what  in  some  places  the  American  Protective  Association  seems 
to  have  done,  and  tries  to  proscribe  Catholics  both  politically 
and  socially,  the  members  of  such  society  show  that  they  them- 
selves are  as  utterly  un-American,  as  alien  to  our  school  of 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  245 

political  thought,  as  the  worst  immigrants  who  land  on  our  shores. 
This  conduct  is  equally  base  and  contemptible;  they  are  the 
worst  foes  of  our  public-school  system,  because  they  strengthen 
the  hands  of  its  ultramundane  enemies;  they  should  receive  the 
hearty  condemnation  of  all  Americans  who  are  truly  patriotic. 

The  mighty  tide  of  immigration  to  our  shores  has  brought 
in  its  train  much  of  good  and  much  of  evil;  and  whether  the  good 
or  the  evil  shall  predominate  depends  mairily  on  whether  these 
newcomers  do  or  do  not  throw  themselves  heartily  into  our 
national  life,  cease  to  be  European,  and  become  Americans  like 
the  rest  of  us.  More  than  a  third  of  the  people  of  the  northern 
states  are  of  foreign  birth  or  parentage.  An  immense  number 
of  them  have  become  completely  Americanized,  and  these  stand 
on  exactly  the  same  plane  as  the  descendants  of  any  Puritan, 
Cavalier,  or  Knickerbocker  among  us,  and  do  their  full  and 
honorable  share  of  the  nation's  work.  But  where  immigrants, 
or  the  sons  of  immigrants,  do  not  heartily  and  in  good  faith 
throw  in  their  lot  with  us,  but  cling  to  the  speech,  the  customs, 
the  ways  of  life,  and  the  habits  of  thought  of  the  Old  World 
which  they  have  left,  they  thereby  harm  both  themselves  and  us. 
If  they  remain  alien  elements,  unassimilated,  and  with  interests 
separate  from  ours,  they  are  mere  obstructions  to  the  current 
of  our  national  life,  and,  moreover,  can  get  no  good  from  it 
themselves.  In  fact,  though  we  ourselves  also  suffer  from  their 
perversity,  it  is  they  who  really  suffer  most.  It  is  an  immense 
benefit  to  the  European  immigrant  to  change  him  into  an  Ameri- 
can citizen.  To  bear  the  name  of  American  is  to  bear  the  most 
honorable  of  titles;  and  whoever  does  not  so  believe  has  no 
business  to  bear  the  name  at  all,  and,  if  he  comes  from  Europe, 
the  sooner  he  goes  back  there  the  better.  Besides,  the  man  who 
does  not  become  Americanized  nevertheless  fails  to  remain  a 
European  and  becomes  nothing  at  all.  The  immigrant  cannot 
possibly  remain  what  he  was,  or  continue  to  be  a  member  of  the 
Old  World  society.  If  he  tries  to  retain  his  old  language,  in  a 
few  generations  it  becomes  a  barbarous  jargon;  if  he  tries  to 
retain  his  old  customs  and  ways  of  life,  in  a  few  generations  he 
becomes  an  uncouth  boor.  He  has  cut  himself  off  from  the  Old 


246  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

World,  and  cannot  retain  his  connection  with  it;  and  if  he  wishes 
ever  to  amount  to  anything  he  must  throw  himself  heart  and  soul, 
and  without  reservation,  into  the  new  life  to  which  he  has  come. 

So,  from  his  own  standpoint,  it  is  beyond  all  question  the 
wise  thing  for  the  immigrant  to  become  thoroughly  American- 
ized. Moreover,  from  our  standpoint,  we  have  a  right  to  demand 
it.  We  freely  extend  the  hand  of  welcome  and  of  good-fellow- 
ship to  every  man,  no  matter  what  his  creed  or  birthplace,  who 
comes  here  honestly  intent  on  becoming  a  good  United  States 
citizen  like  the  rest  of  us;  but  we  have  a  right,  and  it  is  our  duty, 
to  demand  that  he  shall  indeed  become  so,  and  shall  not  con- 
fuse the  issues  with  which  we  are  struggling  by  introducing 
among  us  Old-World  quarrels  and  prejudices.  There  are  cer- 
tain ideas  which  he  must  give  up.  For  instance,  he  must  learn 
that  American  life  is  incompatible  with  the  existence  of  any 
form  of  anarchy,  or,  indeed,  of  any  secret  society  having  murder 
for  its  aim,  whether  at  home  or  abroad;  and  he  must  learn  that 
we  exact  full  reKgious  toleration  and  the  complete  separation  of 
Church  and  State.  Moreover,  he  must  not  bring  in  his  Old- 
World  race  and  national  antipathies,  but  must  merge  them 
into  love  for  our  common  country,  and  must  take  pride  in  the 
things  which  we  can  all  take  pride  in.  He  must  revere  only  our 
flag;  not  only  must  it  come  first,  but  no  other  flag  should  even 
come  second.  He  must  learn  to  celebrate  Washington's  birth- 
day rather  than  that  of  the  Queen  or  Kaiser,  and  the  Fourth  of 
July  instead  of  St.  Patrick's  Day.  Our  political  and  social 
questions  must  be  settled  on  their  own  merits,  and  not  compli- 
cated by  quarrels  between  England  and  Ireland,  or  France  and 
Germany,  with  which  we  have  nothing  to  do:  it  is  an  outrage  to 
fight  an  American  political  campaign  with  reference  to  questions 
of  European  politics.  Above  all,  the  immigrant  must  learn  to 
talk  and  think  and  be  United  States. 

The  immigrant  of  today  can  learn  much  from  the  experience 
of  the  immigrants  of  the  past,  who  came  to  America  prior  to  the 
Revolutionary  War.  Many  of  our  most  illustrious  Revolutionary 
names  were  borne  by  men  of  Huguenot  blood — Jay,  Sevier, 
Marion,  Laurens.  But  the  Huguenots  were,  on  the  whole,  the 


CITIZENSHIP  AND  PATRIOTISM  247 

best  immigrants  we  have  ever  received;  sooner  than  any  other, 
and  more  completely,  they  became  American  in  speech,  con- 
viction, and  thought.  The  Hollanders  took  longer  than  the 
Huguenots  to  become  completely  assimilated;  nevertheless  they 
in  the  end  became  so,  immensely  to  their  own  advantage.  One 
of  the  leading  Revolutionary  generals,  Schuyler,  and  one  of  the 
Presidents  of  the  United  States,  Van  Buren,  were  of  Dutch 
blood;  but  they  rose  to  their  positions,  the  highest  in  the  land, 
because  they  had  become  Americans  and  had  ceased  being 
Hollanders.  If  they  had  remained  members  of  an  alien  body,  cut 
off  by  their  speech  and  customs  and  belief  from  the  rest  of  the 
American  community,  Schuyler  would  have  lived  his  life  as  a 
boorish,  provincial  squire,  and  Van  Buren  would  have  ended 
his  days  a  small  tavern-keeper.  So  it  is  with  the  Germans  of 
Pennsylvania.  Those  of  them  who  became  Americanized  have 
furnished  to  our  history  a  multitude  of  honorable  names,  from 
the  days  of  the  Muhlenbergs  onward;  but  those  who  did  not 
become  Americanized  form  to  the  present  day  an  unimportant 
body,  of  no  significance  in  American  existence.  So  it  is  with  the 
Irish,  who  gave  to  Revolutionary  annals  such  names  as  Carroll 
and  Sullivan,  and  to  the  Civil  War  men  like  Sheridan  and  Shields 
— all  men  who  were  Americans  and  nothing  else:  while  the  Irish 
who  remain  such,  and  busy  themselves  solely  with  alien  politics, 
can  have  only  an  unhealthy  influence  upon  American  life,  and 
can  never  rise  as  do  their  compatriots  who  become  straightout 
Americans.  Thus  it  has  ever  been  with  all  people  who  have 
come  hither,  of  whatever  stock  or  blood. 

But  I  wish  to  be  distinctly  understood  on  one  point.  American- 
ism is  a  question  of  spirit,  convictions,  and  purpose,  not  of  creed 
or  birthplace.  The  politician  who  bids  for  the  Irish  or  German 
vote,  or  the  Irishman  or  German  who  votes  as  an  Irishman  or 
German,  is  despicable,  for  all  citizens  of  this  commonwealth 
should  vote  solely  as  Americans;  but  he  is  not  a  whit  less  des- 
picable than  the  voter  who  votes  against  a  good  American, 
merely  because  that  American  happens  to  have  been  born  in 
Ireland  or  Germany.  Know-nothingism,  in  any  form,  is  as 
utterly  un-American  as  foreignism.  It  is  a  base  outrage  to 


248  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

oppose  a  man  because  of  his  religion  or  birthplace,  and  all  good 
citizens  will  hold  any  such  effort  in  abhorrence.  A  Scandinavian, 
a  German,  or  an  Irishman  who  has  really  become  an  American 
has  the  right  to  stand  on  exactly  the  same  footing  as  any  native- 
born  citizen  hi  the  land,  and  is  just  as  much  entitled  to  the 
friendship  and  support,  social  and  political,  of  his  neighbors. 
Among  the  men  with  whom  I  have  been  thrown  in  close  personal 
contact  socially,  and  who  have  been  among  my  staunchest 
friends  and  allies  politically,  are  not  a  few  Americans  who  happen 
to  have  been  born  on  the  other  side  of  the  water,  in  Germany, 
Ireland,  Scandinavia;  and  I  know  no  better  men  in  the  ranks  of 
our  native-born  citizens. 

In  closing,  I  cannot  better  express  the  ideal  attitude  that 
should  be  taken  by  our  fellow-citizens  of  foreign  birth  than  by 
quoting  the  words  of  a  representative  American,  born  in  Ger- 
many, the  Honorable  Richard  Guenther,  of  Wisconsin.  In  a 
speech  spoken  at  the  time  of  the  Samoan  trouble,  he  said: 

"We  know  as  well  as  any  other  class  of  American  citizens  where  our  duties 
belong.  We  will  work  for  our  country  in  time  of  peace  and  fight  for  it  in  time 
of  war,  if  a  time  of  war  should  ever  come.  When  I  say  our  country,  I  mean, 
of  course,  our  adopted  country.  I  mean  the  United  States  of  America.  After 
passing  through  the  crucible  of  naturalization,  we  are  no  longer  Germans;  we 
are  Americans.  Our  attachment  to  America  cannot  be  measured  by  the 
length  of  our  residence  here.  We  are  Americans  from  the  moment  we  touch 
the  American  shore  until  we  are  laid  in  American  graves.  We  will  fight  for 
America  whenever  necessary.  America,  first,  last,  and  all  the  time.  America 
against  Germany,  America  against  the  world;  America,  right  or  wrong; 
always  America.  We  are  Americans." 

All  honor  to  the  man  who  spoke  such  words  as  those;  and  I 
believe  they  express  the  feelings  of  the  great  majority  of  those 
among  our  fellow-American  citizens  who  were  born  abroad.  We 
Americans  can  only  do  our  allotted  task  well  if  we  face  it 
steadily  and  bravely,  seeing  but  not  fearing  the  dangers.  Above 
all  we  must  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder,  not  asking  as  to  the 
ancestry  or  creed  of  our  comrades,  but  only  demanding  that 
they  be  hi  very  truth  Americans,  and  that  we  all  work  together, 
heart,  hand,  and  head,  for  the  honor  and  the  greatness  of  our 
common  country. 


EDUCATED    LEADERSHIP 

THE  SOCIAL  VALUE  OF  THE  COLLEGE-BRED1 

WILLIAM  JAMES 

[William  James  (1842-1910),  a  distinguished  American  psychologist  and 
philosopher,  was  born  in  New  York  City.  He  studied  for  a  time  in  the 
Lawrence  Scientific  School,  and  afterward  obtained  an  M.D.  degree  from 
Harvard.  In  1872  he  began  to  teach  at  Harvard  as  an  instructor  in  psy- 
chology and  later  became  professor.  His  published  works  in  his  particular 
field  of  study  have  placed  him  among  the  foremost  thinkers  of  his  generation. 
This  article  was  originally  an  address  delivered  at  a  meeting  of  the  Asso- 
ciation of  American  Alumni  at  Radcliffe  College,  November  7,  1907.] 

Of  what  use  is  a  college  training?  We  who  have  had  it 
seldom  hear  the  question  raised — we  might  be  a  little  non- 
plused to  answer  it  offhand.  A  certain  amount  of  meditation 
has  brought  me  to  this  as  the  pithiest  reply  which  I  myself  can 
give:  The  best  claim  that  a  college  education  can  possibly  make 
on  your  respect,  the  best  thing  it  can  aspire  to  accomplish  for 
you  is  this — that  it  should  help  you  to  know  a  good  man  when  you 
see  him.  This  is  as  true  of  women's  as  of  men's  colleges;  but 
that  it  is  neither  a  joke  nor  a  one-sided  abstraction  I  shall  now 
endeavor  to  show. 

What  talk  do  we  commonly  hear  about  the  contrast  between 
college  education  and  the  education  which  business  or  technical 
or  professional  schools  confer?  The  college  education  is  called 
higher  because  it  is  supposed  to  be  so  general  and  so  disinterested. 
At  the  "schools"  you  get  a  relatively  narrow  practical  skill, 
you  are  told,  whereas  the  "colleges"  give  you  the  more  liberal 
culture,  the  broader  outlook,  the  historical  perspective,  the 
philosophic  atmosphere,  or  something  which  phrases  of  that 

1From  McClure's  Magazine,  vol.  xxx,  p.  419.  (February,  1908.)  Reprinted  by 
permission. 

249 


250  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

sort  try  to  express.  You  are  made  into  an  efficient  instrument 
for  doing  a  definite  thing,  you  hear,  at  the  schools;  but,  apart 
from  that,  you  may  remain  a  crude  and  smoky  kind  of  petro- 
leum, incapable  of  spreading  light.  The  universities  and  col- 
leges, on  tie  other  hand,  although  they  may  leave  you  less 
efficient  for  this  or  that  practical  task,  suffuse  your  whole  men- 
tality with  something  more  important  than  skill.  They  redeem 
you,  make  you  well-bred;  they  make  "good  company"  of  you 
mentally.  If  they  find  you  with  a  naturally  boorish  or  caddish 
mind,  they  cannot  leave  you  so,  as  a  technical  school  may  leave 
you.  This,  at  least,  is  pretended;  this  is  what  we  hear  among 
college- trained  people  when  they  compare  their  education  with 
every  other  sort.  Now,  exactly  how  much  does  this  signify? 

It  is  certain,  to  begin  with,  that  the  narrowest  trade  or  pro- 
fessional training  does  something  more  for  a  man  than  to  make  a 
skilful  practical  tool  of  him — it  makes  him  also  a  judge  of 
other  men's  skill.  Whether  his  trade  be  pleading  at  the  bar  or 
surgery  or  plastering  or  plumbing,  it  develops  a  critical  sense  in 
him  for  that  sort  of  occupation.  He  understands  the  difference 
between  second-rate  and  first-rate  work  in  his  whole  branch  of 
industry;  he  gets  to  know  a  good  job  in  his  own  line  as  soon  as 
he  sees  it;  and  getting  to  know  this  in  his  own  line,  he  gets  a 
faint  sense  of  what  good  work  may  mean  anyhow,  that  may,  if 
circumstances  favor,  spread  into  his  judgments  elsewhere. 
Sound  work,  clean  work,  finished  work;  feeble  work,  slack  work, 
sham  work — these  words  express  an  identical  contrast  in  many 
different  departments  of  activity.  In  so  far  forth,  then,  even 
the  humblest  manual  trade  may  beget  in  one  a  certain  small 
degree  of  power  to  judge  of  good  work  generally. 

Now,  what  is  supposed  to  be  the  line  of  us  who  have  the 
higher  college  training?  Is  there  any  broader  line — since 
our  education  claims  primarily  not  to  be  "narrow" — in  which 
we  also  are  made  good  judges  between  what  is  first-rate  and 
what  is  second-rate  only?  What  is  especially  taught  in  the 
colleges  has  long  been  known  by  the  name  of  the  "humanities," 
and  these  are  often  identified  with  Greek  and  Latin.  But  it  is 
only  as  literatures,  not  as  languages,  that  Greek  and  Latin  have 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  *Si 

any  general  humanity  value;  so  that  in  a  broad  sense  the  human- 
ities mean  literature  primarily,  and  in  a  still  broader  sense, 
the  study  of  masterpieces  in  almost  any  field  of  human  endeavor. 
Literature  keeps  the  primacy;  for  it  not  only  consists  of  master- 
pieces, but  is  largely  about  masterpieces,  being  little  more  than 
an  appreciative  chronicle  of  human  master-strokes,  so  far  as  it 
takes  the  form  of  criticism  and  history.  You  can  give  human- 
istic value  to  almost  anything  by  teaching  it  historically.  Geol- 
ogy, economics,  mechanics,  are  humanities  when  taught  with 
reference  to  the  successive  achievements  of  the  geniuses  to  which 
these  sciences  owe  their  being.  Not  taught  thus,  literature 
remains  grammar,  art  a  catalogue,  history  a  list  of  dates,  and 
natural  science  a  sheet  of  formulas  and  weights  and  measures. 

The  sifting  of  human  creations! — nothing  less  than  this  is 
what  we  ought  to  mean  by  the  humanities.  Essentially  this 
means  biography;  what  our  colleges  should  teach  is,  therefore, 
biographical  history,  that  not  of  politics  merely,  but  of  any- 
thing and  everything  so  far  as  human  efforts  and  conquests  are 
factors  that  have  played  their  part.  Studying  in  this  way,  we 
learn  what  types  of  activity  have  stood  the  test  of  time;  we 
acquire  standards  of  the  excellent  and  durable.  All  our  arts 
and  sciences  and  institutions  are  but  so  many  quests  of  perfec- 
tion on  the  part  of  men;  and  when  we  see  how  diverse  the 
types  of  excellence  may  be,  how  various  the  tests,  how  flexible 
tie  adaptations,  we  gain  a  richer  sense  of  what  the  terms 
"better"  and  "worse"  may  signify  in  general.  Our  critical 
sensibilities  grow  both  more  acute  and  less  fanatical.  We  sympa- 
thize with  men's  mistakes  even  in  the  act  of  penetrating  them; 
we  feel  that  pathos  of  lost  causes  and  misguided  epochs  even 
while  we  applaud  what  overcame  them. 

Such  words  are  vague  and  such  ideas  are  inadequate,  but  their 
meaning  is  unmistakable.  What  the  colleges — teaching  humani- 
ties by  examples  which  may  be  special,  but  which  must  be 
typical  and  pregnant — should  at  least  try  to  give  us,  is  a  general 
sense  of  what,  under  various  disguises,  superiority  has  always 
signified  and  may  still  signify.  The  feeling  for  a  good  human 
job  anywhere,  the  admiration  of  the  really  admirable,  the  dis- 


esteem  of  what  is  cheap  and  trashy  and  impermanent — this 
is  what  we  call  the  critical  sense,  the  sense  for  ideal  values.  It 
is  the  better  part  of  what  men  know  as  wisdom.  Some  of  us 
are  wise  in  this  way  naturally  and  by  genius;  some  of  us  never 
become  so.  But  to  have  spent  one's  youth  at  college,  in  contact 
with  the  choice  and  rare  and  precious,  and  yet  still  to  be  a  blind 
prig  or  vulgarian,  unable  to  scent  out  human  excellence  or  to 
divine  it  amid  its  accidents,  to  know  it  only  when  ticketed  and 
labeled  and  forced  on  us  by  others,  this  indeed  should  be  ac- 
counted the  very  calamity  and  shipwreck  of  a  higher  education. 

The  sense  for  human  superiority  ought,  then,  to  be  considered 
our  line,  as  boring  subways  is  the  engineer's  line  and  the  sur- 
geon's is  appendicitis.  Our  colleges  ought  to  have  lit  up  in  us  a 
lasting  relish  for  the  better  kind  of  man,  a  loss  of  appetite  for 
mediocrities,  and  a  disgust  for  cheapjacks.  We  ought  to  smell, 
as  it  were,  the  difference  of  quality  in  men  and  their  proposals 
when  we  enter  the  world  of  affairs  about  us.  Expertness  in  this 
might  well  atone  for  some  of  our  awkwardness  at  accounts,  for 
some  of  our  ignorance  of  dynamos.  The  best  claim  we  can 
make  for  the  higher  education,  the  best  single  phrase  in 
which  we  can  tell  what  it  ought  to  do  for  us,  is,  then,  exactly 
what  I  said:  it  should  enable  us  to  know  a  good  man  when  we 
see  him. 

That  the  phrase  is  anything  but  an  empty  epigram  follows 
from  the  fact  that  if  you  ask  in  what  line  it  is  most  important 
that  a  democracy  like  ours  should  have  its  sons  and  daughters 
skilful,  you  see  that  it  is  this  line  more  than  any  other.  "The 
people  in  their  wisdom" — this  is  the  kind  of  wisdom  most 
needed  by  the  people.  Democracy  is  on  its  trial,  and  no  one 
knows  how  it  will  stand  the  ordeal.  Abounding  about  us  are 
pessimistic  prophets.  Fickleness  and  violence  used  to  be,  but 
are  no  longer,  the  vices  which  they  charge  to  democracy.  What 
its  critics  now  affirm  is  that  its  preferences  are  inveterately  for 
the  inferior.  So  it  was  in  the  beginning,  they  say,  and  so  it  will 
be  world  without  end.  Vulgarity  enthroned  and  institution- 
alized, elbowing  everything  superior  from  the  highway,  this, 
they  tell  us,  is  our  irremediable  destiny;  and  the  picture-papers 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  253 

of  the  European  continent  are  already  drawing  Uncle  Sam  with 
the  hog  instead  of  the  eagle  for  his  heraldic  emblem.  The  privi- 
leged aristocracies  of  the  foretime,  with  all  their  iniquities,  did 
at  least  preserve  some  taste  for  higher  human  quality  and  honor 
certain  forms  of  refinement  by  their  enduring  traditions.  But 
when  democracy  is  sovereign,  its  doubters  say,  nobility  will  form 
a  sort  of  invisible  church,  and  sincerity  and  refinement,  stripped 
of  honor,  precedence,  and  favor,  will  have  to  vegetate  on  suf- 
ferance in  private  corners.  They  will  have  no  general  influence. 
They  will  be  harmless  eccentricities. 

Now,  who  can  be  absolutely  certain  that  this  may  not  be  the 
career  of  democracy?  Nothing  future  is  quite  secure;  states 
enough  have  inwardly  rotted;  and  democracy  as  a  whole  may 
undergo  self-poisoning.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  democracy  is 
a  kind  of  religion,  and  we  are  bound  not  to  admit  its  failure. 
Faiths  and  Utopias  are  the  noblest  exercise  of  human  reason,  and 
no  one  with  a  spark  of  reason  in  him  will  sit  down  fatalistically 
before  the  croaker's  picture.  The  best  of  us  are  filled  with  the 
contrary  vision  of  a  democracy  stumbling  through  every  error 
till  its  institutions  glow  with  justice  and  its  customs  shine  with 
beauty.  Our  better  men  shall  show  the  way  and  we  shall  follow 
them;  so  we  are  brought  round  again  to  the  mission  of  the 
higher  education  in  helping  us  to  know  the  better  kind  of  man 
whenever  we  see  him. 

The  notion  that  a  people  can  run  itself  and  its  affairs  anony- 
mously is  now  well  known  to  be  the  silliest  of  absurdities. 
Mankind  does  nothing  save  through  initiatives  on  the  part  of 
inventors,  great  or  small,  and  imitation  by  the  rest  of  us — 
these  are  the  sole  factors  active  hi  human  progress.  Individuals 
of  genius  show  the  way,  and  set  the  patterns,  which  common 
people  then  adopt  and  follow.  The  rivalry  of  the  patterns  is  the 
history  of  the  world.  Our  democratic  problem  thus  is  statable 
in  ultra-simple  terms:  Who  are  the  kind  of  men  from  whom  our 
majorities  shall  take  their  cue?  Whom  shall  they  treat  as 
rightful  leaders?  We  and  our  leaders  are  the  x  and  the  y  of 
the  equation  here;  all  other  historic  circumstances,  be  they 
economical,  political,  or  intellectual,  are  only  the  background 


254  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

of   occasion   on  which    the   living  drama    works    itself    out 
between  us. 

In  this  very  simple  way  does  the  value  of  our  educated  class 
define  itself;  we  more  than  others  should  be  able  to  divine  the 
worthier  and  better  leaders.  The  terms  here  are  monstrously 
simplified,  of  course,  but  such  a  bird's-eye  view  lets  us  im- 
mediately take  our  bearings.  In  our  democracy,  where  every- 
thing else  is  so  shifting,  we  alumni  and  alumnae  of  the  colleges 
are  the  only  permanent  presence  that  corresponds  to  the  aris- 
tocracy in  older  countries.  We  have  continuous  traditions, 
as  they  have;  our  motto,  too,  is  noblesse  oblige:  and,  unlike  them, 
we  stand  for  ideal  interests  solely,  for  we  have  no  corporate 
selfishness  and  wield  no  powers  of  corruption.  We  ought  to 
have  our  own  class-consciousness.  "Les  intellectuels !"  What 
prouder  club-name  could  there  be  than  this  one,  used  ironically 
by  the  party  of  "red  blood,"  the  party  of  every  stupid  prejudice 
and  passion,  during  the  anti-Dreyfus  craze,  to  satirize  the  men 
in  France  who  still  retained  some  critical  sense  and  judgment ! 
Critical  sense,  it  has  to  be  confessed,  is  not  an  exciting  term, 
hardly  a  banner  to  carry  in  processions.  Affections  for  old 
habit,  currents  of  self-interest,  and  gales  of  passion  are  the 
forces  that  keep  the  human  ship  moving;  and  the  pressure  of  the 
judicious  pilot's  hand  upon  the  tiller  is  a  relatively  insignificant 
energy.  But  the  affections,  passions,  and  interests  are  shifting, 
successive,  and  distraught;  they  blow  in  alternation  while  the 
pilot's  hand  is  steadfast.  He  knows  the  compass,  and,  with 
all  the  leeways  he  is  obliged  to  tack  toward,  he  always  makes 
some  headway.  A  small  force,  if  it  never  lets  up,  will  accumu- 
late effects  more  considerable  than  those  of  much  greater  forces 
if  these  work  inconsistently.  The  ceaseless  whisper  of  the  more 
permanent  ideals,  the  steady  tug  of  truth  and  justice,  give  them 
but  time,  must  warp  the  world  in  their  direction. 

This  bird's-eye  view  of  the  general  steering  function  of  the 
college-bred  amid  the  drif  tings  of  democracy  ought  to  help  us  to 
a  wider  vision  of  what  our  colleges  themselves  should  aim  at. 
If  we  are  to  be  the  yeast-cake  for  democracy's  dough,  if  we  are 
to  make  it  rise  with  culture's  preferences,  we  must  see  to  it  that 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  255 

culture  spreads  broad  sails.  We  must  shake  the  old  double 
reefs  out  of  the  canvas  into  the  wind  and  sunshine,  and  let  in 
every  modern  subject,  sure  that  any  subject  will  prove  human- 
istic, if  its  setting  be  kept  only  wide  enough. 

Stevenson  says  somewhere  to  his  reader:  "You  think  you  are 
just  making  this  bargain,  but  you  are  really  laying  down  a  link 
in  the  policy  of  mankind."  Well,  your  technical  school  should 
enable  you  to  make  your  bargain  splendidly;  but  your  college 
should  show  you  just  the  place  of  that  kind  of  bargain — a  pretty 
poor  place,  possibly — in  the  whole  policy  of  mankind.  That 
is  the  kind  of  liberal  outlook,  of  perspective,  of  atmosphere, 
which  should  surround  every  subject  as  a  college  deals  with  it. 

We  of  the  colleges  must  eradicate  a  curious  notion  which 
numbers  of  good  people  have  about  such  ancient  seats  of  learn- 
ing as  Harvard.  To  many  ignorant  outsiders,  that  name  suggests 
little  more  than  a  kind  of  sterilized  conceit  and  incapacity  for 
being  pleased.  In  Edith  Wyatt's  exquisite  book  of  Chicago 
sketches  called  Every  One  His  Own  Way,  there  is  a  couple  who 
stand  for  culture  in  the  sense  of  exclusiveness,  Richard  Elliot 
and  his  feminine  counterpart — feeble  caricatures  of  mankind, 
unable  to  know  any  good  thing  when  they  see  it,  incapable  of 
enjoyment  unless  a  printed  label  gives  them  leave.  Possibly 
this  type  of  culture  may  exist  near  Cambridge  and  Boston,  there 
may  be  specimens  there,  for  priggishness  is  just  like  painter's 
colic  or  any  other  trade-disease.  But  every  good  college  makes 
its  students  immune  against  this  malady,  of  which  the  microbe 
haunts  the  neighborhood-printed  pages.  It  does  so  by  its  gen- 
eral tone  being  too  hearty  for  the  microbe's  life.  Real  culture 
lives  by  sympathies  and  admirations,  not  by  dislikes  and  dis- 
dains— under  all  misleading  wrappings  it  pounces  unerringly 
upon  the  human  core.  If  a  college,  through  the  inferior  human 
influences  that  have  grown  regnant  there,  fails  to  catch  the 
robuster  tone,  its  failure  is  colossal,  for  its  social  function  stops; 
democracy  gives  it  a  wide  berth,  turns  toward  it  a  deaf  ear. 

"Tone,"  to  be  sure,  is  a  terribly  vague  word  to  use,  but  there 
is  no  other,  and  this  whole  meditation  is  over  questions  of  tone. 
By  their  tone  are  all  things  human  either  lost  or  saved.  If 


256  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

democracy  is  to  be  saved  it  must  catch  the  higher,  healthier 
tone.  If  we  are  to  impress  it  with  our  preferences,  we  ourselves 
must  use  the  proper  tone,  which  we,  hi  turn  must  have  caught 
from  our  own  teachers.  It  all  reverts  in  the  end  to  the  action 
of  innumerable  imitative  individuals  upon  each  other  and  to 
the  question  of  whose  tone  has  the  highest  spreading  power.  As 
a  class,  we  college  graduates  should  look  to  it  that  ours  has 
spreading  power.  It  ought  to  have  the  highest  spreading 
power. 

In  our  essential  function  of  indicating  the  better  men,  we  now 
have  formidable  competitors  outside.  McClure's  Magazine, 
the  American  Magazine,  Collier's  Weekly  and,  in  its  fashion,  the 
World's  Work,  constitute  together  a  real  popular  university 
along  this  very  line.  It  would  be  a  pity  if  any  future  historian 
were  to  have  to  write  words  like  these:  "By  the  middle  of  the 
twentieth  century  the  higher  institutions  of  learning  had  lost 
all  influence  over  public  opinion  in  the  United  States.  But  the 
mission  of  raising  the  tone  of  democracy,  which  they  had  proved 
themselves  so  lamentably  unfitted  to  exert,  was  assumed  with 
rare  enthusiasm  and  prosecuted  with  extraordinary  skill  and 
success  by  a  new  educational  power;  and  for  the  clarification  of 
their  human  sympathies  and  elevation  of  their  human  prefer- 
ences, the  people  at  large  acquired  the  habit  of  resorting  ex- 
clusively to  the  guidance  of  certain  private  literary  adventures, 
commonly  designated  in  the  market  by  the  affectionate  name  of 
'ten-cent  magazines.'" 

Must  not  we  of  the  colleges  see  to  it  that  no  historian  shall 
ever  say  anything  like  this?  Vague  as  the  phrase  of  knowing 
a  good  man  when  you  see  him  may  be,  diffuse  and  indefinite  as 
one  must  leave  its  application,  is  there  any  other  formula  that 
describes  so  well  the  result  at  which  our  institutions  ought  to 
aim?  If  they  do  that,  they  do  the  best  thing  conceivable.  If 
they  fail  to  do  it,  they  fail  in  very  deed.  It  surely  is  a  fine 
synthetic  formula.  If  our  faculties  and  graduates  could  once 
collectively  come  to  realize  it  as  the  great  underlying  purpose 
toward  which  they  have  always  been  more  or  less  obscurely 
groping,  a  great  clearness  would  be  shed  over  many  of  their 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  257 

problems;  and,  as  for  their  influence  in  the  midst  of  our  social 
system,  it  would  embark  upon  a  new  career  of  strength. 


THE  RELATION  BETWEEN  A  LIBERAL  EDUCATION 
AND  TRUE  AMERICANISM1 

HENRY  CABOT  LODGE 

[For  biographical  note,  see  page  224.  This  selection  was  originally  an 
oration  delivered  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  at  Harvard  University, 
June,  1892.  The  title  then  used,  "True  Americanism,"  has  been  here  changed 
to  one  which  indicates  more  clearly  that  the  writer  was  discussing  how  a 
liberal  education  should  be  productive  of  a  high  type  of  Americanism.] 

One  of  the  best  known  and  least  read  of  Queen  Anne's  men 
is  Sir  Richard  Steele.  His  good  and  evil  fortune,  his  kind  heart, 
his  ready  wit,  his  attractive  but  somewhat  imperfect  character, 
are  all  familiar  to  a  large  posterity  with  whom  he  has  ever  been 
popular.  But  his  writings,  in  which  he  took  so  much  simple 
pride,  are,  it  is  to  be  feared,  largely  unread.  The  book  of  quo- 
tations contains  only  two  sentences  of  his  writing,  and  one  of 
these  can  hardly  be  called  familiar.  But  the  other  fully  deserves 
the  adjective,  for  it  is  perhaps  the  finest  compliment  ever  paid  by 
a  man  to  a  woman.  Steele  wrote  of  Lady  Elizabeth  Hastings 
that  "to  love  her  was  a  liberal  education,"  and  thus  rescued  her 
forever  from  the  oblivion  of  the  British  Peerage.  He  certainly 
did  not  mean  by  this  that  to  love  the  Lady  Elizabeth  was  as  good 
as  a  knowledge  of  Latin  and  Greek,  for  that  would  have  been  no 
compliment  at  all,  unless  from  Carlyle's  friend  Dryasdust,  a  very 
different  personage  from  the  gallant  and  impecunious  husband  of 
"Prue."  No,  Steele  meant  something  very  far  removed  from 
Latin  and  Greek,  and  everybody  knows  what  he  meant,  even  if 
one  cannot  put  it  readily  into  words. 

To  the  mind  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  liberal  education 
entirely  classical,  if  you  please,  so  far  as  books  went,  meant  the 
education  which  bred  tolerance  and  good  manners  and  courage, 

iFrom  Harvard  Graduates'  Magazine,  vol.  iii,  p.  g.  (September,  1892.)  Reprinted 
by  permission. 


258  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

which  taught  a  man  to  love  honor  and  truth  and  patriotism  and 
all  things  of  good  report.  Like  the  history  of  Sir  John  Froissart, 
it  was  the  part  of  a  liberal  education  "to  encourage  all  valorous 
hearts  and  to  show  them  honourable  examples."  Such,  I  think, 
we  all  believe  a  liberal  education  to  be  today,  in  its  finest  and 
best  sense.  But  yet  this  is  not  all,  nor  are  the  fields  of  learn- 
ing, which  a  great  university  opens  to  its  students,  all.  Besides 
the  liberal  education  of  Steele  and  the  ample  page  of  knowledge 
which  a  university  unrolls,  there  is  still  something  more,  and  this 
something  is  the  most  important  part.  .  .  . 

Ordinarily  we  think  of  a  college  simply  as  a  place  where 
men  receive  their  preliminary  training  for  the  learned  professions, 
where  they  lay  the  foundations  for  a  life  of  scientific  or  historical 
investigation,  for  classical  scholarship,  or  for  the  study  of 
modern  languages  or  literature,  and  where  they  gather  that  gen- 
eral knowledge  which  constitutes  the  higher  education,  even  if 
the  student  leaves  learning  behind  him  at  the  college  gate  to  enter 
on  a  life  of  action  or  of  business.  Yet  in  reality  these  are  but 
the  details  of  a  liberal  education,  and  we  do  not  want  to  lose 
sight  of  the  city  on  account  of  the  number  of  houses  immediately 
around  us. 

The  great  function  of  a  liberal  education  is  to  fit  a  man  for  the 
life  about  him,  and  to  prepare  him,  whatever  profession  or  pur- 
suit he  may  follow,  to  be  a  useful  citizen  of  the  country  which 
gave  him  birth.  This  is  of  vast  importance  in  any  country,  but 
in  the  United  States  it  is  of  peculiar  moment,  because  here  every 
man  has  imposed  upon  him  the  duties  of  sovereignty,  and  in 
proportion  to  his  capacity  and  his  opportunities  are  the  responsi- 
bilities of  that  sovereignty.  .  .  . 

If  a  man  is  not  a  good  citizen  it  boots  little  whether  he  is  a 
learned  Grecian  or  a  sound  Latinist.  If  he  is  out  of  sympathy 
with  his  country,  his  people,  and  his  time,  the  last  refinement 
and  the  highest  accomplishments  are  of  slight  moment.  But  it 
is  of  the  last  importance  that  every  man,  and  especially  every 
educated  man,  in  the  United  States,  no  matter  what  his  profession 
or  business,  should  be  in  sympathy  with  his  country,  with  its 
history  in  the  past,  its  needs  in  the  present,  and  its  aspirations  for 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  259 

the  future.  If  he  has  this,  all  the  rest  will  follow,  and  it  is  pre- 
cisely at  this  point  that  there  seems  to  be  a  real  danger  in  our 
university  life  and  in  our  liberal  education.  The  peril,  moreover, 
is  none  the  less  real  because  the  wrong  influence  is  subtle. 

We  are  apt  to  gather  here  at  the  end  of  each  college  year  in  a 
kindly  and  very  natural  spirit  of  mutual  admiration.  Those  of 
us  who  come  from  the  busy  outside  world  come  to  renew  old 
memories,  and  to  brighten,  if  only  for  a  moment,  the  friendships 
which  time  and  separation  would  darken  and  rust.  We  are  in 
no  mood  for  criticism.  Yet  it  is  perhaps  as  well  not  to  let  the 
mutual  congratulations  go  too  far,  for  we  have  the  advantage  of 
coming  from  without,  and  are  not  likely  to  mistake  the  atmos- 
phere which  gathers  about  a  university  for  that  of  the  world  at 
large.  A  Lord  Chancellor  of  England  on  one  occasion  at  Oxford 
said  that  he  had  listened  with  delight  to  the  general  admiration 
which  everyone  had  expressed  for  everybody  else,  and  for  the 
university  in  particular,  and  that  he  was  glad  to  see  the  great 
advances  that  had  come  since  his  time,  and  to  know  that  Oxford 
could  boast  that  the  tide  of  thought  and  civilization  had  risen 
in  the  university  as  high  almost  as  that  which  flowed  without  the 
college  walls.  The  sting  of  the  satire  lay  as  usual  in  its  leaven 
of  truth.  The  danger  of  every  university  lies  in  its  losing  touch 
with  the  world  about  it.  This  is  bad  anywhere.  It  is  worse  in  a 
republic  than  anywhere  else. 

We  must,  however,  be  more  definite  again  if  we  would  reach 
any  result.  "Losing  touch"  is  a  vague  expression,  "lack  of  sym- 
pathy" is  little  better.  It  is  not  easy  to  put  my  meaning  in  one 
word,  but  perhaps  to  say  that  the  first  duty  of  an  American  uni- 
versity and  its  liberal  education  should  be  to  make  its  students 
good  Americans  comes  as  near  to  it  as  anything.  Still  we  must 
go  a  step  further,  for  many  persons  are  prone  to  sneer  at  the 
demand  for  Americanism,  as  if  it  meant  merely  a  blatant  and 
boastful  Chauvinism,  employed  only  for  the  baser  political  uses. 
There  is  always  an  attempt  to  treat  it  as  if  it  were  something  like 
the  utterances  which  Dickens  satirized  long  ago  in  the  persons  of 
Jefferson  Brick  and  Elijah  Pogram.  That  was  certainly  neither 
an  agreeable  nor  creditable  form  of  national  self-assertion.  Yet 


26o  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

it  was  infinitely  better,  coarse  and  bragging  as  it  was,  than  the 
opposite  spirit  which  turns  disdainfully  even  from  the  glories  of 
nature  because  they  are  American  and  not  foreign,  and  which 
looks  scornfully  at  the  Sierras  because  they  are  not  the  Alps. 
The  Bricks  and  the  Pograms  may  have  been  coarse  and  vulgar, 
yet  the  spirit  which  they  caricatured  was  at  least  strong,  and 
capable  of  better  things.  But  the  other  spirit  is  pitifully  weak, 
and  has  no  future  before  it  except  one  of  further  decay. 

True  Americanism  is  something  widely  different  from  either  of 
these.  It  is  really  only  another  word  for  intelligent  patriotism. 
Loud  self-assertion  has  no  part  in  it,  and  mere  criticism  and  carp- 
ing, with  their  everlasting  whine  because  we  are  not  as  others 
are,  cannot  exist  beside  it.  Americanism  hi  its  right  sense  does 
not  tend  in  the  least  to  repress  wholesome  criticism  of  what  is 
wrong,  on  the  contrary  it  encourages  it.  But  this  is  the  criticism 
which  is  made  only  as  the  first  step  toward  a  remedy,  and  is  not 
mere  snarling  for  snarling's  sake.  Such  Americanism  as  this 
takes  pride  in  what  we  have  done  and  in  the  men  we  have  bred, 
and  knows  not  the  eternal  comparison  with  other  people  which  is 
the  sure  sign  of  a  tremulous  little  mind,  and  of  a  deep  doubt  of 
one's  own  position. 

To  all  of  which  the  answer  is  constantly  made  that  this  is 
merely  asserting  a  truism  and  a  commonplace,  and  that  of  course 
everyone  is  intelligently  patriotic.  Of  the  great  mass  of  our 
people  this  is  true  beyond  question.  They  are  thoroughly  patri- 
otic in  the  best  sense.  Theoretically  it  is  true  of  all.  Practi- 
cally there  is  still  much  left  to  be  desired  among  our  liberally 
educated  men.  It  is  this  precise  defect  among  those  who  have  a 
liberal  education  of  which  I  wish  to  speak. 

The  danger  of  the  higher  education  of  a  great  university  is 
that  it  may  in  widening  the  horizon  destroy  the  sense  of  pro- 
portion so  far  as  our  own  country  is  concerned.  The  teachings  of 
a  university  open  to  us  the  literature,  the  art,  the  science,  the 
learning,  and  the  history  of  all  other  nations.  They  would  be 
quite  worthless  if  they  did  not  do  so.  These  teachings  form,  and 
necessarily  form,  the  great  mass  of  all  that  we  study  here.  That 
which  relates  to  our  own  country  is  inevitably  only  a  small  part, 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  261 

comparatively  speaking,  of  the  great  whole.  This  is  quite 
natural.  Our  own  nation  is  comparatively  new.  Its  history  is  not 
long,  and  it  is  not  set  off  by  the  glitter  of  a  court,  or  of  an  ancient 
aristocracy.  Our  literature  is  young.  Our  art  is  just  developing. 
In  the  broad  sweep  of  a  liberal  education,  that  which  relates  to 
the  United  States  is  but  one  of  many  parts.  Hence  there  is  a 
tendency  to  lose  the  sense  of  proportion,  to  underrate  our  own 
place  in  the  history  and  life  of  the  world,  and  to  forget  that 
knowledge  of  our  own  country,  while  it  excludes  nothing  else, 
is  nevertheless  more  important  to  each  of  us  than  that  of  all 
other  countries,  if  we  mean  to  play  a  man's  part  in  life.  There 
is  no  danger  that  liberally  educated  men  will  overvalue  their  own 
country,  there  is  great  danger  that  they  will  undervalue  it.  This 
does  not  arise  from  any  lack  of  opportunity  here  to  learn  our  his- 
tory, or  to  know  what  we  have  done  as  a  people.  It  comes  from 
a  failure  rightly  to  appreciate  our  history  and  our  achievements. 
We  are  too  apt  to  think  of  ourselves  as  something  apart  and 
inferior,  and  to  fail  to  see  our  true  place  in  the  scale  of  nations. 
Many  men  of  liberal  education  either  expect  too  much  of  the 
United  States,  or  value  too  little  what  has  been  accomplished 
here.  As  has  just  been  said,  we  are  a  young  nation.  Certain 
fruits  of  a  high  civilization  require  time  to  ripen.  It  is  foolish 
to  criticise  the  absence  of  those  things  which  time  alone  can  bring 
to  perfection,  and  their  coming  is  retarded,  not  hastened,  by  fault- 
finding. On  the  other  hand,  we  are  apt  to  overlook  what  really 
has  been  done,  and  we  often  fail  to  judge  rightly  because  we  use 
superficial  comparisions  with  some  other  contemporary  people, 
instead  of  measuring  ourselves  by  the  just  standards  of  the 
world's  history. 

Let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  the  last  hundred  years  which 
cover  our  history  as  a  nation.  In  that  time  we  have  conquered  a 
continent,  won  it  from  the  wilderness  and  the  savages,  by  much 
privation,  and  much  desperate  and  heroic  fighting,  unrecorded 
for  the  most  part,  with  nature  and  with  man.  Where  else  in  the 
nineteenth  century  will  you  find  such  a  conquest  as  that?  And 
this  empire  that  we  have  conquered  we  have  saved  also  from 
being  rent  asunder.  That  work  of  salvation  cost  us  four  years  of 


26a  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

gigantic  war.  Look  again  over  the  nineteenth  century  and  see 
where  you  can  find  a  war  of  like  magnitude,  equal  to  ours  in  its 
stake,  its  fighting,  its  sacrifices,  or  in  the  noble  spirit  that  it 
evoked  among  our  people.  As  the  French  traveler  said,  stand- 
ing among  the  graves  at  Arlington,  "only  a  great  people  is  cap- 
able of  a  great  civil  war." 

I  will  not  touch  upon  the  material  development,  unequaled  in 
history,  which  has  gone  hand  in  hand  with  this  conquest  of 
waste  places  and  fighting  tribes  of  Indians.  It  is  enough  here  to 
count  only  those  higher  things  which  show  the  real  greatness 
of  a  nation. 

Turn  to  the  men.  In  our  hundred  years  we  have  given  to  the 
world's  roll  of  statesmen  Washington  and  Lincoln.  You  cannot 
match  them  elsewhere  in  the  same  period.  Are  there  any  better, 
or  purer,  or  greater  than  they  to  be  found  in  the  tide  of  time? 
Take  up  the  list  of  great  soldiers.  Setting  aside  Napoleon,  who 
stands  all  apart  with  Caesar  and  Hannibal,  what  nation  has  made 
a  larger  gift  to  the  leaders  of  men  in  battle  than  the  country 
which  added  to  the  list  the  names  of  Washington,  Grant,  and 
Lee?  Since  Nelson  fell  at  Trafalgar,  where  in  naval  warfare 
will  you  find  a  greater  chief  than  Farragut? 

In  those  great  inventions  which  have  affected  the  history  and 
development  of  man,  the  country  which  has  given  to  the  world 
the  cotton-gin,  the  telegraph,  the  sewing-machine,  the  steamship, 
the  telephone,  and  the  armored  ship  holds  a  place  second  to 
none. 

Turn  now  to  those  fields  which  exact  the  conditions  of  an 
old  civilization, — wealth,  leisure,  and  traditions.  Even  here, 
despite  the  adverse  circumstances  of  national  youth,  there  is 
much  to  record,  much  to  give  fair  promise,  much  in  which  to 
rejoice. 

From  the  time  of  Franklin  and  his  kite,  we  ever  have  done  our 
share  in  scientific  work.  We  have  developed  a  literature  of  our 
own,  and  made  it  part  of  the  great  literature  of  the  English- 
speaking  race.  The  Luxembourg  has  opened  its  jealously 
guarded  doors  to  give  space  and  place  to  four  American  painters, 
and  the  chisel  of  St.  Gaudens  has  carved  statues  which  no  con- 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  263 

temporary  elsewhere  can  rival.  The  buildings  at  the  Chicago 
Fair  came  as  a  beautiful  surprise  and  a  great  achievement. 
They  showed  that  we  had  the  full  capacity  to  take  rank  among 
the  great  building  races  of  the  earth. 

It  is  a  great  record  for  a  hundred  years.  Even  if  we  glance 
only  at  the  mountain  tops,  it  is  a  marvelous  story  of  conquest 
and  growth.  If  our  universities  do  not  teach  us  to  value  it  rightly, 
they  are  of  little  worth,  for  to  know  the  present  and  to  act  in  it 
we  must  have  a  just  knowledge  of  our  place  in  history.  If  we 
have  that  knowledge,  we  shall  realize  that  a  nation  which,  what- 
ever its  shortcomings,  has  done  so  much  and  bred  such  men,  has 
a  promise  for  the  future  and  a  place  in  the  world  which  brings  a 
grave  responsibility  to  those  who  come  to  the  inheritance. 

The  first  step,  then,  for  our  universities,  if  in  the  true  spirit  of 
a  liberal  education  they  seek  to  fit  men  for  the  life  about  them, 
is  to  make  them  Americans  and  send  them  forth  in  sympathy 
with  their  country.  And  the  second  step  is  like  the  first:  A 
university  should  aim  to  put  a  man  in  sympathy  with  his  time, 
and  make  him  comprehend  it  if  we  would  have  him  take  effective 
part  in  the  life  of  his  time.  As  the  danger  on  the  first  point  of 
patriotism  is  that  the  many-sided  teachings  of  a  university  will 
prevent  a  just  sense  of  the  place  of  our  country,  so  on  the  second 
point  the  danger  is  that  dealing  largely  with  the  past,  the  univer- 
sity will  alienate  its  students  from  the  present.  The  past  is  a 
good  schoolhouse  but  a  bad  dwelling-place.  We  cannot  really 
understand  the  present  without  the  fullest  knowledge  of  the  past, 
but  it  is  the  present  with  which  we  are  to  deal,  and  the  past  must 
not  be  allowed  to  hide  it. 

There  is  a  very  visible  tendency  in  universities  to  become  in 
their  teachings  laudatores  temporis  acti,  and  this  tendency  is  full 
of  peril.  The  world  was  never  made  better,  the  great  march  of 
humanity  was  never  led  by  men  whose  eyes  were  fixed  upon  the 
past.  The  leaders  of  men  are  those  who  look  forward,  not  back- 
ward. 

"For  not  through  eastern  windows  only, 
When  daylight  comes,  comes  in  the  light; 
In  front  the  sun  climbs  slow,  how  slowly, 
But  westward  look — the  land  is  bright." 


264  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

As  I  say  do  not  undervalue  your  own  country,  so  I  say  do  not 
undervalue  your  own  time.  The  nineteenth  century  is  dying. 
It  has  been  a  great  century.  It  has  seen  Waterloo,  and  Sedan, 
and  Gettysburg.  As  it  has  passed  along  it  has  beheld  the  settle- 
ment of  Australia  and  South  Africa,  and  the  conquest  of  the 
American  continent.  It  has  replaced  the  stage-coach  with  the 
locomotive,  and  united  the  continents  with  electric  cables.  It 
has  been  the  century  of  Lincoln  and  Bismarck,  of  Wellington 
and  Grant,  and  Lee  and  Moltke.  Scott  and  Thackeray,  Dick- 
ens and  Hawthorne,  have  woven  stories  to  rejoice  it;  and  Brown- 
ing and  Tennyson  and  Victor  Hugo,  Longfellow,  Lowell, 
Holmes,  and  Poe  have  been  among  its  later  poets.  It  has  been 
a  time  richly  worth  living  hi.  Now  in  its  closing  years,  with  the 
new  and  unknown  century  hard  upon  us,  it  is  more  than  ever  a 
tune  worth  living  in,  full  of  marvelous  voices  to  those  who  will 
listen  with  attentive  ears,  full  of  opportunity  to  anyone  who  will 
take  part  in  its  strifes,  fullest  of  all  of  profound  interest  to  those 
who  will  look  upon  it  with  considerate  eyes. 

How,  then,  is  a  university  to  reach  the  results  we  ought  to 
have  from  its  teachings  in  this  country  and  this  period?  How  is 
it  to  inspire  its  students  with  sympathy  for  their  country  and 
their  time  as  the  most  important  of  all  its  lessons?  Some  persons 
may  reply  that  it  can  be  obtained  by  making  the  university 
training  more  practical.  Much  has  been  said  on  this  point  first 
and  last,  but  the  theory,  which  is  vague  at  best,  seems  to  me  to 
have  no  bearing  here.  It  is  not  a  practical  education  which  we 
seek  in  this  regard,  even  if  it  was  the  business  of  a  university  to 
give  one,  but  a  liberal  education,  which  shall  foster  certain  strong 
qualities  of  heart  and  head.  Our  search  now  and  here  is  not  for 
an  education  which  shall  enable  a  man  to  earn  his  living  with  the 
least  possible  delay,  but  for  a  training  which  shall  develop 
character  and  mind  along  certain  lines. 

To  one  man  Harvard  gives  the  teaching  which  fits  him  to  be 
an  engineer,  to  another  that  which  opens  to  him  law  or  medicine 
or  theology.  But  to  all  her  students  alike  it  is  her  duty  to  give 
that  which  will  send  them  out  from  her  gates  able  to  understand 
and  to  sympathize  with  the  life  of  the  time.  This  cannot  be 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  265 

done  by  rules  or  systems  or  textbooks.  It  can  come  and  can 
only  come  from  the  subtle,  impalpable,  and  yet  powerful  influ- 
ences which  the  spirit  and  atmosphere  of  a  great  university  can 
exert  upon  those  within  its  care.  It  is  not  easy  to  define  or  class- 
ify those  influences,  although  we  all  know  their  general  effect. 
Nevertheless  it  is,  I  think,  possible  to  get  at  something  suffi- 
ciently definite  to  indicate  what  is  lacking,  and  where  the  peril 
lies.  It  all  turns  on  the  spirit  which  inspires  the  entire  collegiate 
body,  on  the  mental  attitude  of  the  university  as  a  whole.  This 
brings  us  at  once  to  the  danger  which  I  think  confronts  all  our 
large  universities  today,  and  which  I  am  sure  confronts  that  uni- 
versity which  I  know  and  love  best.  We  are  given  over  too 
much  to  the  critical  spirit,  and  we  are  educating  men  to  become 
critics  of  other  men,  instead  of  doers  of  deeds  themselves.  This 
is  all  wrong.  Criticism  is  healthful,  necessary,  and  desirable,  but 
it  is  always  abundant,  and  is  infinitely  less  important  than  per- 
formance. There  is  not  the  slightest  risk  that  the  supply  of  critics 
will  run  out,  for  there  are  always  enough  middle-aged  failures 
to  keep  the  ranks  full,  if  every  other  resource  should  fail.  But 
even  if  we  were  short  of  critics,  it  is  a  sad  mistake  to  educate 
young  men  to  be  mere  critics  at  the  outset  of  life.  It  should  be 
the  first  duty  of  a  university  to  breed  in  them  far  other  qualities. 
Faith  and  hope,  and  belief,  enthusiasm,  and  courage,  are  the 
qualities  to  be  trained  and  developed  in  young  men  by  a  liberal 
education.  Youth  is  the  time  for  action,  for  work,  not  for  criti- 
cism. A  liberal  education  should  encourage  the  spirit  of  action, 
not  deaden  it.  We  want  the  men  whom  we  send  out  from  our 
universities  to  count  in  the  battle  of  life  and  in  the  history  of 
their  tune,  and  to  count  more  and  not  less  because  of  their  liberal 
education.  They  will  not  count  at  all,  be  well  assured,  if  they 
come  out  trained  only  to  look  coldly  and  critically  on  all  that  is 
being  done  in  the  world,  and  on  all  who  are  doing  it.  Long  ago 
Emerson  pointed  the  finger  of  scorn  at  this  type  when  he  said: 
"There  is  my  fine  young  Oxford  gentleman,  who  says  there  is 
nothing  new  and  nothing  true  and  no  matter."  We  cannot 
afford  to  have  that  type,  and  it  is  the  true  product  of  that  crit- 
ical spirit  which  says  to  its  scholars,  "See  how  badly  the  world  is 


266  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

governed;  see  how  covered  with  dust  and  sweat  the  men  are  who 
are  trying  to  do  the  world's  business,  and  how  many  mistakes 
they  make;  let  us  sit  here  in  the  shade  with  Amaryllis  and  add 
up  the  errors  of  these  bruised,  grimy  fellows,  and  point  out  what 
they  ought  to  do,  while  we  make  no  mistakes  ourselves  by  stick- 
ing to  the  safe  rule  of  attempting  nothing."  This  is  a  very 
comfortable  attitude,  but  it  is  the  one  of  all  others  which  a  uni- 
versity should  discourage  instead  of  inculcating.  Moreover,  with 
such  an  attitude  of  mind  toward  the  world  of  thought  and 
action  is  always  allied  a  cultivated  indifference,  than  which 
there  is  nothing  more  enervating. 

And  these  things  are  no  pale  abstractions  because  they  are  in 
their  nature  purely  matters  of  sentiment  and  thought.  When 
Cromwell  demanded  the  New  Model,  he  said,  "A  set  of  poor 
tapsters  and  town  apprentices  would  never  fight  against  men  of 
honor."  They  were  of  the  same  race  and  the  same  blood  as  the 
cavaliers,  these  tapsters  and  apprentices;  they  had  the  same 
muscles  and  the  same  bodily  form  and  strength.  It  was  the  right 
spirit  that  was  lacking,  and  this  Cromwell  with  the  keen  eye  of 
genius  plainly  saw.  So  he  set  against  the  passion  of  loyalty  the 
stern  enthusiasm  of  religion,  and  swept  resistance  from  his  path. 
One  sentiment  against  another,  and  the  mightier  conquered. 
Come  nearer  to  our  own  time.  Some  six  thousand  ill-armed 
American  frontiersmen  met  ten  thousand  of  the  unconquered 
army  of  Wellington's  veterans  hard  by  New  Orleans.  They  beat 
them  in  a  night  attack,  they  got  the  better  of  them  in  an  artillery 
duel,  and  finally  they  drove  back  with  heavy  slaughter  the  onset 
of  these  disciplined  troops  who  had  over  and  over  again  carried 
by  storm  defenses  manned  by  the  soldiers  of  Napoleon.  These 
backwoodsmen  were  of  the  same  race  as  their  opponents,  no 
stronger,  no  more  inured  to  hardships,  than  Wellington's  men, 
but  they  had  the  right  spirit  in  them.  They  did  not  stop  to 
criticise  the  works,  and  to  point  out  that  cotton-bales  were  not 
the  kind  of  rampart  recognized  in  Europe.  They  did  not  pause  to 
say  that  a  properly  constituted  army  ought  to  have  bayonets  and 
that  they  had  none.  Still  less  did  they  set  about  finding  fault 
with  their  leader.  They  went  in  and  did  their  best,  and  their 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  267 

best  was  victory.  One  example  is  as  good  as  a  hundred.  It  is 
the  spirit,  the  faith,  the  courage,  the  determination  of  men,  which 
have  made  the  world  move.  These  are  the  qualities  which  have 
carried  the  dominion  of  the  English-speaking  people  across  con- 
tinents and  over  wide  oceans  to  the  very  ends  of  the  earth.  It  is 
the  same  in  every  field  of  human  activity.  The  men  who  see  noth- 
ing but  the  lions  in  the  path,  who  fear  ridicule  and  dread  mis- 
takes, who  behold  the  faults  they  may  commit  more  plainly  than 
the  guerdon  to  be  won,  win  no  battles,  govern  no  states,  write  no 
books,  carve  no  statues,  paint  no  pictures.  The  men  who  do  not 
fear  to  fall  are  those  who  rise.  It  is  the  men  who  take  the  risks 
of  failure  and  mistakes  who  win  through  defeats  to  victory. 

If  the  critical  spirit  govern  in  youth,  it  chokes  action  at  its 
very  source.  We  must  have  enthusiasm,  not  indifference,  will- 
ingness to  subordinate  ourselves  to  our  purpose,  if  we  would 
reach  results,  and  an  imperfect  result  is  far  better  than  none  at 
all.  Abraham  Lincoln  said  once,  speaking  of  Henry  Clay:  "A 
free  people  in  times  of  peace  and  quiet,  when  pressed  by  no  com- 
mon danger,  naturally  divide  into  parties.  At  such  times  the  man 
who  is  of  neither  party,  is  not,  cannot  be,  of  any  consequence. 
Mr.  Clay  was  therefore  of  a  party."  This  which  Lincoln  said 
of  politics  merely  expresses  in  a  single  direction  the  truth  that  a 
man  cannot  succeed  who  is  a  mere  critic.  He  must  have  the  faith 
and  enthusiasm  which  will  enable  him  to  do  battle  whether  with 
sword  or  pen,  with  action  or  thought,  for  a  cause  in  which  he 
believes.  This  does  not  imply  any  lack  of  independence,  any 
blind  subservience  to  authority  or  prejudice.  Far  from  it.  But 
it  does  imply  the  absence  of  the  purely  critical  spirit  with  no  pur- 
pose but  criticism,  which  dries  up  the  very  springs  of  action. 

"That  is  the  doctrine  simple,  ancient,  true; 
Such  is  life's  trial,  as  old  Earth  smiles  and  knows. 
Make  the  low  nature  better  by  your  throes; 
Give  earth  yourself,  go  up  for  gain  above." 

There  is  nothing  fanciful  in  all  this.  It  is  very  real,  very  near, 
very  practical.  You  cannot  win  a  boat-race,  or  a  football  match 
unless  you  have  the  right  spirit.  Thews  and  sinews  are  common 


7268  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

enough.  They  can  be  had  for  the  asking.  But  the  best  will  not 
avail  if  they  are  not  informed  with  the  right  spirit.  You  must 
have  more  than  trained  muscles;  you  must  have  enthusiasm, 
determination,  brains,  and  the  capacity  for  organization  and 
subordination.  If  the  critical  spirit  prevails,  and  everyone  is 
engaged  in  criticising,  analyzing,  and  declaring  how  much  better 
things  would  be  if  they  were  only  different,  you  will  not,  you 
cannot  win,  other  things  being  equal.  Differences  in  physical 
qualities  may  often  determine  results,  but  such  differences  come 
and  go  like  luck  at  a  game  of  cards.  But  if  the  critical,  indif- 
ferent spirit  reigns,  it  means  sure  and  continued  defeats,  for  it 
saps  the  very  roots  of  action  and  success. 

As  it  is  in  the  struggles  of  the  playground  or  the  river,  so  it  is 
in  the  wider  fields  of  serious  life.  If  a  university  breeds  a  race 
of  little  critics,  they  will  be  able  to  point  out  other  men's  faults 
and  failures  with  neatness  and  exactness,  but  they  will  ac- 
complish nothing  themselves.  They  will  make  the  world  no 
better  for  their  presence,  they  will  not  count  in  the  conflict,  they 
will  not  cure  a  single  one  of  the  evils  they  are  so  keen  to  detect. 
Worst  of  all,  they  will  bring  reproach  on  a  liberal  education, 
which  will  seem  to  other  men  to  be  a  hindrance  when  it  should  be 
a  help. 

The  time  in  which  we  live  is  full  of  questions  of  the  deepest 
moment.  There  has  been,  during  the  century  now  ending,  the 
greatest  material  development  ever  seen,  greater  than  that  of  all 
preceding  centuries  together.  The  condition  of  the  average  man 
has  been  raised  higher  than  ever  before,  and  wealth  has  been 
piled  up  beyond  the  wildest  fancy  of  romance.  We  have  built 
up  a  vast  social  and  industrial  system,  and  have  carried  civiliza- 
tion to  the  highest  point  it  has  ever  touched.  That  system  and 
that  civilization  are  on  trial.  Grave  doubts  and  perils  beset 
them.  The  economic  theories  of  fifty  years  ago  stand  helpless 
and  decrepit  in  their  immobility  before  the  social  questions  which 
face  us  now.  Everywhere  today  there  is  an  ominous  spirit  of 
unrest.  Everywhere  there  is  a  feeling  that  all  is  not  well  when 
wealth  abounds  and  none  the  less  dire  poverty  ranges  by  its 
side,  when  the  land  is  not  fully  populated  and  yet  the  number 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  269 

of  the  unemployed  reaches  to  the  millions.  One  is  not  either  an 
alarmist  or  a  pessimist  because  he  recognizes  these  facts,  and  it 
would  be  worse  than  folly  to  try  to  blink  them  out  of  sight.  I 
believe  that  we  can  deal  with  them  successfully  if  we  will  but  set 
ourselves  to  the  grave  task,  as  we  have  to  the  trials  and  dangers  of 
the  past.  I  am  sure  that,  if  these  great  social  problems  can  be 
solved  anywhere,  they  can  be  solved  here  in  the  United  States. 
But  the  solution  will  tax  to  the  utmost  all  the  wisdom  and  cour- 
age and  learning  that  the  country  can  provide.  What  part  are 
our  universities,  with  their  liberal  education,  to  play  in  the  his- 
tory that  is  now  making  and  is  still  to  be  written?  They  are  the 
crown  and  glory  of  our  civilization,  but  they  can  readily  be  set 
aside  if  they  fall  out  of  sympathy  with  the  vast  movements 
about  them.  I  do  not  say  whether  they  should  seek  to  resist,  or 
to  sustain,  or  to  guide  and  control  those  movements.  But  if  they 
would  not  dry  up  and  wither,  they  must  at  least  understand  them. 
A  great  university  must  be  in  touch  with  the  world  about  it, 
with  its  hopes,  its  passions,  its  troubles,  and  its  strivings.  If 
it  is  not,  it  must  be  content 

"For  aye  to  be  in  shady  cloister  mewed, 
Chanting  faint  hymns  to  the  cold,  fruitless  moon." 


LIBERTY  AND  DISCIPLINE1 

ABBOTT  LAWRENCE  LOWELL 

[Abbott  Lawrence  Lowell  (1856 )  has  been,  since  1909,  president  of 

Harvard  University.   He  is  distinguished  as  an  authority  on  the  science  of 
government,  and  is  the  author  of  many  books  and  articles  in  this  field.] 

We  are  living  in  the  midst  of  a  terrific  war  in  which  each  side 
casts  upon  the  other  the  blame  for  causing  the  struggle;  but  in 
which  each  gives  the  same  reason  for  continuing  it  to  the  bitter 
end — that  reason  being  the  preservation  from  destruction  of  the 
essential  principle  of  its  own  civilization.  One  side  claims  to  be 
fighting  for  the  liberty  of  man;  the  other  for  a  social  system  based 

iFrom  Yale  Review,  vol.  v,  p.  741.    (July,  1916.)    Reprinted  by  permission. 


270  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

on  efficiency  and  maintained  by  discipline.  Of  course  the  dif- 
ference is  one  of  degree.  No  one  believes  in  permitting  every 
man  to  do  whatever  he  pleases,  no  matter  how  it  may  injure 
his  neighbor  or  endanger  the  community;  and  no  country  refuses 
all  freedom  of  action  to  the  individual.  But  although  the  dif- 
ference is  only  of  degree  and  of  emphasis,  it  is  none  the  less  real. 
Our  own  people  have  always  asserted  their  devotion  to  the 
principle  of  personal  liberty,  and  in  some  ways  they  have  carried 
it  farther  than  any  other  nation.  It  is  not,  therefore,  useless  to 
compare  the  two  principles  that  we  may  understand  then-  rela- 
tive advantages,  and  perceive  the  dangers  of  liberty  and  the 
conditions  of  its  fruitfuhiess. 

Americans  are  more  familiar  with  the  benefits  of  discipline, 
in  fact,  than  conscious  of  them  in  theory.  Anyone  who  should 
try  to  manage  a  factory,  a  bank,  a  railroad,  a  ship,  a  military 
company,  or  an  athletic  team,  on  the  principle  of  having  every 
employee  or  member  of  the  organization  take  whatever  part 
in  the  work,  and  do  it  in  whatever  way  seemed  best  in  his 
own  eyes,  would  come  to  sudden  grief  and  be  mercilessly  laughed 
at.  We  all  know  that  any  enterprise  can  be  successful  only  if 
there  is  coordination  of  effort,  or  what  for  short  we  call  team 
play;  and  that  this  can  happen  only  if  the  nature  of  each  man's 
work,  and  the  way  he  is  to  perform  it,  is  arranged  with  a  view 
to  the  whole,  so  that  each  part  fitting  into  its  place  contributes  its 
proper  share  to  the  total  result.  Experience  has  taught  us  that 
the  maximum  efficiency  is  attained  where  the  team  play  is  most 
nearly  perfect,  and  therefore,  the  subordination  of  the  individual 
to  the  combined  action  is  most  nearly  complete.  Then  there  is 
the  greatest  harmony  of  action,  and  the  least  waste  by  friction 
or  working  at  cross  purposes.  But  everyone  is  aware  that  such 
a  condition  does  not  come  about  of  itself.  Men  do  not  fit 
into  their  places  in  a  team  or  organization  spontaneously. 
Until  they  have  become  experts  they  do  not  appreciate  the 
relation  of  their  particular  work  to  the  plan  as  a  whole;  and 
even  when  they  have  become  familiar  with  the  game  or  the 
industry,  they  are  apt  to  overestimate  their  own  part  in  it,  or 
disagree  about  the  best  method  of  attaining  the  result.  Every- 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  271 

one  likes  to  rule,  and  when  Artemus  Ward  suggested  that 
all  the  men  in  a  regiment  should  be  made  Brigadier  Generals  at 
once  to  avoid  jealousy,  he  touched  a  familiar  weakness  in 
human  nature.  He  was  not  obliged  to  explain  the  joke,  because 
no  one  fails  to  see  the  absurdity  of  having  everybody  in  com- 
mand. But  that  would  be  exactly  the  situation  if  nobody  were 
in  command.  If  there  is  to  be  a  plan  for  combined  action,  some- 
body must  have  power  to  decide  what  that  plan  shall  be;  and 
if  the  part  of  every  performer  is  to  be  subordinated  to  the 
common  plan,  somebody  must  have  authority  to  direct  the  action 
of  each  in  conformity  with  the  plan.  Moreover,  that  authority 
must  have  some  means  of  carrying  its  directions  into  effect.  It 
must  be  maintained  by  discipline;  either  by  forcing  those  who  do 
not  play  their  parts  rightly  to  conform  to  the  general  plan,  or 
by  eliminating  them  from  the  organization. 

This  principle  of  coordinated  effort  maintained  by  discipline 
applies  to  every  combination  of  men  where  the  maximum 
efficiency  for  a  concrete  object  is  desired,  be  it  a  business,  a 
charity,  or  a  whole  state.  It  is  a  vitally  important  principle 
which  no  people  can  afford  to  lose  from  sight,  but  it  is  not 
everything.  Whether  it  conduces  to  the  greatest  happiness  or 
not  is  a  question  I  leave  on  one  side,  for  I  am  now  discussing  only 
effectiveness.  Yet  even  from  that  standpoint  we  have  left  some- 
thing out  of  account.  The  principle  would  be  absolutely  true 
if  men  were  machines,  or  if  the  thing  desired  were  always  a 
concrete  object  to  be  attained  by  cooperation,  such  as  the  build- 
ing of  a  railroad,  the  production  of  wealth,  the  winning  of 
victory  in  war  or  on  a  playing  field.  But  men  are  human  beings 
and  the  progress  of  civilization  is  a  thing  far  too  complex  to  be 
comprised  within  any  one  concrete  object  or  any  number  of  such 
objects  depending  on  combined  effort.  This  is  where  the  advan- 
tages of  liberty  come  in. 

Pasteur,  one  of  the  greatest  explorers  of  nature  and  bene- 
factors of  the  age,  remarked  that  the  value  of  liberty  lay  in 
its  enabling  every  man  to  put  forth  his  utmost  effort.  In  France 
under  the  ancient  monarchy  men  were  very  nearly  born  to  trades 
and  professions,  or  at  least  large  portions  of  tie  people  were 


272  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

virtually  excluded  from  many  occupations.  The  posts  of  officers 
in  the  army  were  generally  reserved  for  men  of  noble  rank.  The 
places  of  judges  were  purchased,  and  were  in  fact  largely  heredi- 
tary, and  so  on  through  much  of  the  higher  grade  of  employ- 
ments. The  Revolution  broke  this  system  down,  and  Napoleon 
insisted  that  the  true  principle  of  the  French  Revolution  was  the 
opening  of  all  careers  to  talent;  not  so  much  equality  as  freedom 
of  opportunity.  Under  any  system  of  compulsion  or  restraint  a 
man  may  be  limited  to  duties  unsuited  to  his  qualities,  so  that  he 
cannot  use  the  best  talents  he  possesses.  The  opportunities  in  a 
complex  modern  civilization  are  of  infinite  variety,  subtle, 
elastic,  incapable  of  being  compassed  by  fixed  regulations  for 
attaining  definite  objects.  The  best  plan  for  perfecting  the  post 
office,  if  strictly  followed,  would  not  have  produced  the  telegraph; 
the  most  excellent  organization  of  the  telegraph  would  not  have 
created  the  telephone;  the  most  elaborate  system  of  telephone 
wires  and  switchboards  would  not  have  included  the  wireless. 
The  greatest  contributions  to  knowledge,  to  the  industrial  arts, 
and  to  the  comforts  of  life  have  been  unforeseen,  and  have  often 
come  in  unexpected  directions.  The  production  of  these  required 
something  more  than  a  highly  efficient  organization  maintained 
by  discipline. 

Moreover — what  is  nearer  to  our  present  purpose — believers 
in  the  principle  of  liberty  assert  that  a  man  will  put  forth  more 
effort,  and  more  intelligent  effort,  if  he  chooses  his  own  field, 
and  works  in  his  own  way,  than  if  he  labors  under  the  constant 
direction  of  others.  The  mere  sense  of  freedom  is  stimulating  in 
a  high  degree  to  vigorous  natures.  The  man  who  directs  himself 
is  responsible  for  the  consequences.  He  guarantees  the  result, 
and  stakes  his  character  and  reputation  on  it.  If  after  selecting 
his  own  career  he  finds  that  he  has  chosen  wrongly,  he  writes 
himself  down  a  fool.  The  theory  of  liberty,  then,  is  based  upon 
the  belief  that  a  man  is  usually  a  better  judge  of  his  own  aptitudes 
than  anyone  else  can  be,  and  that  he  will  put  forth  more  and 
better  effort  if  he  is  free  than  if  he  is  not. 

Both  these  principles,  of  discipline  and  of  liberty,  contain 
much  truth.  Neither  is  absolutely  true,  nor  can  be  carried  to 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  273 

its  logical  extreme,  for  one  by  subjecting  all  a  man's  actions 
to  the  control  of  a  master  would  lead  to  slavery,  the  other  by 
leaving  every  man  free  to  disregard  the  common  welfare  would 
lead  to  anarchy.  In  America  we  are  committed,  as  it  were,  to 
err  on  the  side  of  liberty;  and  it  is  my  purpose  to  consider  here 
what  are  the  dangers  and  conditions  of  liberty  in  the  American 
college.  It  is  in  college  that  young  men  first  enjoy  the  pleasure 
of  liberty  and  assume  its  responsibilities.  They  sometimes  think 
themselves  still  under  no  little  restriction,  because  they  cannot 
leave  the  college  during  term  time  without  permission,  and  must 
attend  the  lectures,  examinations,  and  other  duties;  but  these  are 
slight  compared  with  the  restraints  which  will  surround  any  busy 
man  in  after  life.  There  is  no  better  place  than  college  to  learn  to 
use  freedom  without  abusing  it.  This  is  one  of  the  greatest 
opportunities  of  college  life,  the  thing  that  makes  strong  men 
stronger  and  sometimes  weak  men  weaker  than  before. 

Liberty  means  a  freedom  of  choice  in  regulating  one's  con- 
duct. If  you  are  free  to  attend  a  lecture,  but  not  free  to  stay 
away  from  it,  then  it  is  compulsory.  You  have  no  liberty 
whatever  in  the  matter.  A  man  of  wealth  has  no  freedom  about 
paying  taxes.  He  is  obliged  to  pay  them.  But  he  has  freedom 
about  giving  money  away  to  relieve  distress,  or  for  other  chari- 
table purposes,  because  he  may  give  or  not  as  he  pleases.  A  man  is 
at  liberty  to  be  generous  or  mean,  to  be  kindly  or  selfish,  to  be 
truthful  or  tricky,  to  be  industrious  or  lazy.  In  all  these  things 
his  duty  may  be  clear,  but  he  is  free  to  disregard  it.  In  short, 
liberty  means  freedom  to  do  wrong  as  well  as  to  do  right,  else 
it  is  no  freedom  at  all.  It  means  freedom  to  be  foolish  as  well  as 
to  be  wise,  to  prefer  immediate  self-indulgence  to  future  benefit 
for  oneself  or  others,  liberty  to  neglect  as  well  as  to  perform  the 
duties  of  the  passing  hour  that  never  comes  again.  But  if  liberty 
were  used  exclusively  to  do  wrong,  it  would  be  intolerable,  and 
good  sense  would  sweep  it  from  the  earth.  The  supposition  on 
which  liberty  is  based,  the  condition  on  which  it  exists,  is  that 
men  will  use  it  for  right  more  than  for  wrong;  that  in  the  long 
run  they  will  do  right  more  often,  and  do  more  that  is  good,  than 
under  a  system  of  restraint. 


274  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

Mark  this,  liberty  and  discipline  are  not  mutually  exclusive. 
Liberty  does  not  mean  that  good  results  can  ever  be  attained 
without  discipline.  If  rightly  used  it  means  only  that  regu- 
lation by  others  is  replaced  by  self-discipline  no  less  severe  and 
inexorable.  The  man  who  does  not  force  himself  to  work  when 
he  is  disinclined  to  do  so  will  never  achieve  anything  worth  doing. 
Some  really  industrious  men  affect  to  do  only  what  they  like, 
never  working  save  when  the  spirit  moves  them;  and  occasionally 
such  men  deceive  themselves  in  trying  to  deceive  others.  If 
not,  they  have  usually  schooled  themselves  to  want  what  they 
ought  to  want.  Self-discipline  has  brought  their  inclinations 
as  well  as  their  conduct  into  a  happy  subjection  to  their  will. 
But,  in  fact,  labor  carried  anywhere  near  the  point  of  maximum 
productivity,  the  point  where  a  man  puts  forth  his  utmost  effort, 
is  never  wholly  pleasureable,  although  the  moral  force  required  to 
drive  oneself  at  top  speed  varies  much  in  different  people. 
An  idle  disposition,  however,  is  no  sufficient  excuse  for  shirk- 
ing. Many  years  ago  a  stingy  old  merchant  in  Boston  lay  dying. 
The  old  miser  turned  to  the  brother  sitting  by  his  bedside  and 
said:  "John,  I  wish  I  had  been  more  generous  in  giving  away 
money  in  my  Hie.  But  it  has  been  harder  for  me  than  for  most 
men  to  give  money;  and,  John,  I  think  the  Lord  will  make  allow- 
ance for  differences  in  temperament."  Thus  do  we  excuse  our- 
selves for  self-indulgence. 

How  many  men  in  every  American  college  make  an  effort 
to  get  through  with  little  to  spare,  win  a  degree,  and  evade  an 
education?  Not  an  insignificant  number.  How  many  strive 
earnestly  to  put  forth  their  utmost  effort  to  obtain  an  education 
that  will  develop  their. intellectual  powers  to  the  fullest  extent, 
and  fit  them  in  the  highest  possible  degree  to  cope  with  the 
problems  they  will  face  as  men  and  as  citizens?  Again  not  an 
insignificant  number,  but  are  they  enough  to  satisfy  Pasteur's 
aspirations,  or  even  to  justify  his  idea  of  the  object  of  liberty? 

Everywhere  in  the  higher  education  of  Europe,  whether  the 
system  is  one  of  freedom  or  restraint,  whether  as  in  Germany 
a  degree  is  conferred  only  on  men  who  have  real  proficiency,  or 
as  in  Oxford  and  Cambridge  a  mere  pass  degree  is  given  for  very 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  275 

little  real  work,  everywhere  the  •  principle  of  competition  is 
dominant  for  those  who  propose  to  make  a  marked  success  in 
life.  Let  us  take  the  countries  which  claim  to  be  fighting  in  this 
war  for  liberty.  A  student  at  Oxford  or  Cambridge  knows  that 
his  prospects,  not  only  of  a  position  in  the  university,  but  at  the 
bar,  in  permanent  public  employment  and  political  life,  are 
deeply  influenced  by,  and  in  many  cases  almost  dependent  upon, 
his  winning  a  place  in  the  first  group  of  scholars  at  graduation. 
The  man  who  gets  it  plays  thereafter  with  loaded  dice.  It  gives 
him  a  marked  advantage  at  the  start,  and  to  some  extent  follows 
him  ever  afterwards.  Of  course,  there  are  exceptional  men  who  by 
ability  come  to  the  front  rank  without  it,  but  on  the  whole  they 
are  surprisingly  few.  Mr.  Balfour  is  sometimes  referred  to  as  a 
man  who  did  not  distinguish  himself  at  Cambridge,  and  Sir 
Edward  Grey  is  said  to  have  been  an  incorrigibly  poor  scholar 
at  Balliol  in  Oxford,  yet  both  of  them  won  third-class  honors, 
which  is  not  far  from  what  we  should  consider  $  B  K  rank.  To 
mention  only  men  who  have  been  prominent  in  public  life,  Peel, 
Cardwell,  Sherbrooke,  Gladstone,  Harcourt,  Bryce,  Trevelyan, 
Asquith,  Haldane,  Milner,  Simon,  Ambassador  Spring-Rice, 
and  many  more  won  honors  of  the  first  class  at  one  of  the  two 
great  English  universities;  while  a  number  of  other  men  dis- 
tinguished in  public  life,  such  as  Disraeli,  Chamberlain,  and 
Lloyd-George,  did  not  go  to  Oxford  or  Cambridge.  It  would  not 
be  difficult  to  add  a  long  list  of  judges,  and  in  fact,  as  an  Oxford 
man  once  remarked  to  me,  high  honors  at  the  university  have 
been  almost  a  necessity  for  reaching  the  bench.  No  doubt  the 
fact  that  men  have  achieved  distinction  at  their  universities 
is  a  test  of  their  ability;  but  also  the  fact  that  they  have  done 
so  is  a  direct  help  at  the  outset  of  their  careers. 

If  we  turn  to  France  we  find  the  same  principle  of  compe- 
tition in  a  direct  form  though  working  in  other  channels.  The 
Ecole  Centrale,  the  great  school  of  engineering,  and  the  Beaux 
Arts,  the  great  school  of  architecture  and  art,  admit  only  a  limited 
number  of  students  by  competitive  examination;  and  the  men 
who  obtain  the  highest  prizes  at  graduation  are  guaranteed  public 
employment  for  life.  Europeans  believe  that  preeminence  in 


276  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

those  things  for  which  higher  education  exists  is  a  measure  of 
intellectual  and  moral  qualities;  and  the  fact  that  it  is  recognized 
as  such  tends  to  make  it  so,  for  the  rewards  attached  to  it  make 
ambitious  and  capable  young  men  strive  for  it,  and  put  forth 
their  utmost  effort  in  the  competition.  Let  us  hope  that 
some  day  our  colleges,  and  the  public  at  large,  will  recognize 
more  fully  than  they  do  today  the  value  of  excellence  in 
college  work  as  a  measure  of  capacity,  as  a  promise  of  future 
achievement,  and  thereby  draw  out  more  effort  among  the 
undergraduates.  It  is  already  the  case  to  a  large  extent  in 
our  professional  schools,  and  ought  to  be  the  case  in  our  colleges, 
if  a  college  education  is  really  worth  the  money  and  labor 
expended  on  it. 

At  present  the  college  is  scholastically  democratic.  The 
world  rarely  asks  how  a  man  got  in,  or  how  he  graduated. 
It  is  enough  that  he  did  graduate  somehow.  Bachelor  degrees, 
whether  indicating  high  scholarship  or  a  minimum  of  work, 
are  treated  by  the  public  as  free  and  equal;  and  what  is  worse 
they  are  far  too  much  so  treated  by  the  colleges  and  universities 
themselves.  Now,  the  requirement  for  a  college  degree  cannot 
be  more  than  a  minimum,  and  in  the  nature  of  things  a  rather 
low  minimum,  requiring  on  the  part  of  men  with  more  than  ordi- 
nary ability  a  very  small  amount  of  work;  far  less  than  is  needed 
to  call  forth  then-  utmost  effort. 

This  is  one  of  many  illustrations  of  the  well-known  fact  that 
education  moves  slowly,  and  follows  rather  than  leads  the  spirit 
of  the  time.  We  live  in  a  strenuous  age,  a  time  of  activity  and 
energy.  I  think  it  was  Bagehot  who  remarked  that  the  change  of 
habits  was  evident  even  in  the  casual  greeting  of  friends.  He 
says  that  we  ask  a  man  whom  we  have  not  met  for  some  time, 
"What  have  you  been  doing  since  I  saw  you  last?"  as  if  we 
expected  him  to  have  been  doing  something.  I  remember  some 
time  ago  reading  a  story  in  a  magazine  about  travelers  in  a  rail- 
road train,  who  were  stopped  at  a  custom  house  to  have  their 
baggage  examined,  and  found,  that,  instead  of  holding  clothes, 
their  bags  and  trunks  contained  the  works  they  had  done  in 
life.  It  was  the  last  judgment,  and  several  well-meaning  persons 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  277 

found  their  many  pieces  of  luggage  sadly  empty.  A  gentleman 
among  the  number  came  forward  to  explain  that  they  had  sup- 
posed their  duty  to  consist  in  avoiding  sin,  and  they  had  done 
so;  that  their  lives  had  been  spent  in  pleasures,  for  the  most  part 
wholly  innocent,  and  that  this  was  all  they  had  understood  to 
be  required  of  them. 

The  story  illustrates  a  change  of  attitude  which  has  come 
over  the  world,  and  men  who  have  passed  fifty  have  seen  it 
come  in,  comparing  -the  generation  that  went  before  them 
with  that  which  has  followed  them.  Thou  shalt  is  quite  as 
important  as  thou  shalt  not.  Professor  Munro  in  speaking  in  a 
college  chapel  some  time  ago  on  the  importance  of  positive  as 
well  as  negative  morality  remarked  that  most  people  if  asked 
the  meaning  of  the  fourth  commandment  would  think  only  of  its 
forbidding  work  on  Sunday;  whereas  its  opening  words  are  "Six 
days  shalt  thou  labor."  We  live  not  only  in  a  strenuous  world, 
but  in  the  most  strenuous  part  of  the  world.  Innocent  leisure 
is  no  longer  quite  respectable  here,  except  in  college;  and  it  is 
getting  not  to  be  respectable  there — except  in  study. 

Most  of  us  feel  that  the  American  college  is  a  very  precious 
thing.  It  is  a  clean  and  healthy  place,  morally,  intellectually, 
and  physically.  I  believe  that  no  large  body  of  young  men  any- 
where in  the  world  live  on  the  whole  such  clean  lives,  or  are 
cleaner  or  more  honorable  in  thought.  The  college  is  a  place 
where  a  man  may,  and  where  many  a  man  does,  develop  his 
character  and  his  mental  force  to  an  almost  indefinite  extent; 
where  he  may,  and  often  does,  acquire  an  inspiration  that  sus- 
tains him  through  life;  where  he  is  surrounded  by  influences  that 
fit  him,  if  he  will  follow  them,  for  all  that  is  best  in  the  citizen  of 
a  republic.  The  chief  defect  in  the  American  college  today  is 
that  it  has  not  yet  been  stirred  by  the  strenuous  spirit  of  the 
age,  the  spirit  that  dignifies  the  principle  of  liberty,  or  at  least 
it  has  been  stirred  mainly  in  the  line  of  what  are  called  student 
activities.  These  are  excellent  things  in  themselves,  to  be  en- 
couraged in  full  measure,  but  they  do  not  make  up  for  indolence 
and  lack  of  effort  in  the  studies  which  are,  after  all,  the  justifica- 
tion for  the  existence  of  the  college.  Let  us  put  this  matter  per- 


278  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

fectly  plainly.  The  good  sense  of  the  community  would  never 
approve  of  having  young  men  devote  the  whole  of  their  best  four 
years  to  the  playing  field,  or  to  those  other  accessories  of  college 
lif  e,  the  management  of  athletic  or  other  organizations,  or  writing 
for  college  papers.  These,  as  I  have  said,  are  excellent  as  acces- 
sories, but  if  they  were  the  whole  thing,  if  instruction  and  study 
were  abolished,  the  college  would  soon  be  abolished  also.  What, 
then,  in  a  land  of  restless  activity  and  energy  is  likely  to  be  the 
future  of  a  college  in  which  a  large  part  of  the  undergraduates 
regard  extra-curriculum  activities  as  the  main  interest,  and  edu- 
cation as  an  accessory;  and  where  a  smaller,  but  not  inconsider- 
able fraction  regard  all  activity  as  irksome?  If  our  young  men 
cannot  answer  that  question  themselves,  let  them  ask  some  man 
who  is  not  himself  a  college  graduate  but  has  worked  his  way  up 
in  the  world  by  his  diligence,  perseverance,  pluck,  and  force  of 
character. 

The  danger  that  under  a  system  of  liberty  men  will  fail  to 
put  forth  their  utmost  effort  lies  not  merely,  or  perhaps  mainly, 
in  a  lack  of  moral  force.  It  is  due  quite  as  much  to  a  lack  of  moral 
and  intellectual  vision,  an  inability  to  see  any  valuable  result 
to  be  accomplished  by  the  effort.  This  is  particularly  true  in 
college.  Many  a  man  who  intends  to  work  hard  thereafter  in  his 
profession  or  business,  tries  to  get  through  college  with  a  small 
amount  of  study.  He  is  fully  aware  that  in  his  future  career  he 
will  make  no  use  of  a  knowledge  of  the  force  of  the  Greek  aorist,  of 
the  properties  of  a  regular  parallelopipedon,  or  of  the  effect  of  the 
reign  of  Edward  the  First  on  English  constitutional  history;  and 
hence  he  is  inclined  to  think  these  things  of  no  great  practical 
consequence  to  him.  In  no  form  of  human  productivity  of 
far-reaching  importance  is  the  direct  practical  utility  of  every 
step  in  the  process  visible  to  the  man  who  takes  it.  The  work- 
man in  a  factory  may  not  know  why  he  mixes  certain  ingredients 
in  prescribed  proportions,  why  he  heats  the  mixture  to  a  certain 
temperature,  or  why  he  cools  it  slowly.  It  might  be  difficult 
to  explain  it  to  him;  and  he  does  these  things  because  they  are 
ordered  by  the  boss. 

The  difficulty  of  perceiving  the  connection  between  the  means 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  279' 

and  the  end  is  greater  in  the  case  of  education,  as  distinguished 
from  mechanical  training,  than  in  almost  anything  else,  be- 
cause the  processes  are  more  subtle,  more  intangible,  less  capable 
of  accurate  analysis.  In  fact  the  raw  material  that  is  being 
worked  up  is  not  the  subject  matter  of  the  work  but  the  mind  of 
the  worker  himself;  and  the  effect  on  his  mind  is  not  from  day  to 
day  perceptible.  His  immediate  task  is  to  learn  something,  and 
he  asks  himself  whether  it  is  really  worth  learning;  whereas 
the  knowledge  he  acquires  is  not  of  the  first  importance,  the 
vital  question  being  how  much  he  has  improved  in  the  ability 
to  acquire  and  use  it.  At  school  the  process  is  equally  obscure, 
but  the  boy  learns  his  lessons  because  he  is  obliged  to  do  so.  If 
he  is  a  good  boy  he  learns  them  well,  because,  although  blind  to 
the  meaning  of  it  all,  he  knows  it  is  his  duty.  He  does  not  seek 
to  understand  the  process;  and  I  recall  now  with  amusement  the 
ridiculous  attempts  we  sometimes  made  in  our  school  days  to 
explain  to  our  girl  friends  why  it  was  worth  while  to  study  Latin. 
Many  a  boy  who  has  ranked  high  at  school,  without  asking 
himself  the  use  of  studying  at  all,  does  little  work  in  college, 
because  he  asks  himself  why  he  should  make  the  effort  and  cannot 
answer  the  question.  The  contrast  illustrates  the  difference 
between  a  system  of  discipline  and  one  of  liberty.  In  both  the 
relation  of  the  work  of  the  day  and  the  result  to  be  attained  is 
invisible,  but  the  motive  power  is  not  the  same. 

Under  a  system  of  external  discipline  the  motive  power  is 
supplied  by  the  habit  of  obedience,  enforced  where  necessary 
by  penalties.  For  the  good  man  the  habit  or  duty  of  blind 
obedience  is  enough.  As  Colonel  Mudge  expressed  it  when 
he  received  a  mistaken  order  to  charge  and  sprang  forward  to 
lead  his  regiment  at  Gettysburg,  "It  is  murder,  but  it  is  the 
order."  Some  of  the  greatest  examples  of  heroism  in  human  his- 
tory have  been  given  in  this  way.  But  blind  obedience  cannot  be 
the  motive  power  where  liberty  applies,  and  a  man  must  deter- 
mine his  own  conduct  for  himself.  In  the  vast  number  of  actions 
where  the  direct  utility  of  each  step  cannot  be  seen,  he  must  act 
on  general  principles,  on  a  conviction  that  the  particular  step 
is  part  of  a  long  process  which  leads  forward  to  the  end.  The 


28o  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

motive  power  of  liberty  is  faith.  All  great  enterprises,  all  great 
lives,  are  built  upon  and  sustained  by  an  overmastering  faith 
in  something. 

Faith  is  based  upon  imagination  which  can  conceive  things 
the  eye  cannot  behold.  Young  people  are  prone  to  think  of 
imagination  as  fantastic,  the  creation  by  the  mind  of  impossible 
forms  and  events,  distortions  of  nature,  or  caricatures  of  man. 
But  it  is  a  higher  imagination  which  pictures  invisible  things  as 
they  are,  or  as  they  might  reaUy  be.  Historic  imagination  does 
not  people  the  past  with  impossible  beings  doing  senseless  acts, 
but  with  living  men  who  thought  and  acted  as  men  do  not  think 
and  act  today,  but  actually  did  under  conditions  that  have  long 
passed  away.  The  true  reformer  is  not  he  who  portrays  an  ideal 
commonwealth  which  could  never  be  made  to  work,  but  the 
man  whose  imagination  has  such  a  grasp  on  the  springs  of 
human  nature  that  he  can  foresee  how  people  would  really 
conduct  themselves  in  conditions  yet  untried,  and  whose  plans 
work  out  as  he  designed  them. 

If  faith  is  thus  based  upon  imagination,  its  fruition  requires 
a  steadfastness  of  purpose  that  is  not  weakened  by  discourage- 
ments or  turned  aside  by  obstacles  that  shut  out  the  view  and 
cast  dark  shadows  across  the  path.  The  doubter,  who  asks 
himself  at  every  stage  whether  the  immediate  effort  is  really 
worth  while,  is  lost.  Prophesy  confidently  of  him  that  he  will 
never  reach  his  goal. 

President  Pritchett  in  a  walking  tour  in  Switzerland  asked 
a  mountaineer  about  the  road  to  the  place  whither  he  was 
bound.  The  man  replied  that  he  had  never  been  there,  but 
he  knew  that  was  the  path  which  led  to  it.  Such  is  the  pathway 
to  the  ventures  of  life.  None  of  us  has  ever  been  over  the  road 
we  intend  to  travel  in  the  world.  If  we  believe  that  the  way  we 
take  leads  to  our  destination  we  must  follow  it,  not  stopping  or 
turning  back  because  a  curve  in  the  mountain  trail  obscures  the 
distant  scene,  or  does  not  at  the  moment  seem  to  lead  in  the 
right  direction.  We  must  go  on  in  faith  that  every  step  along 
the  road  brings  us  nearer,  and  that  the  faster  we  walk  the  farther 
we  shall  go  before  night  falls  upon  us.  The  man  who  does  not  feel 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  281 

any  reason  for  effort  because  he  cannot  see  the  direct  utility  of 
the  things  he  learns  has  no  faith  in  a  college  education;  and  if 
he  has  no  faith  in  it  he  had  better  not  waste  time  on  it,  but  take 
up  something  else  that  he  has  faith  in,  or  that  is  better  suited 
to  men  of  little  faith. 

Every  form  of  civilization  is,  not  only  at  its  inception  and 
in  critical  times,  but  always  and  forever,  on  trial.  If  it  proves 
less  effective  than  others  it  will  be  eliminated,  peacefully  or 
forcibly,  by  a  gradual  process  of  change  or  by  a  catastrophe. 
Now  the  test  of  a  civilization  based  on  liberty  is  the  use  men  make 
of  the  liberty  they  enjoy,  and  it  is  a  failure  not  only  if  men  use 
it  to  do  wrong,  but  also  if  they  use  it  to  do  nothing,  or  as  little 
as  is  possible  to  maintain  themselves  in  personal  comfort.  This 
is  true  of  our  institutions  as  a  whole  and  of  the  American  col- 
lege in  particular.  A  student  who  has  no  sustaining  faith  in  the 
education  he  can  get  there;  who  will  not  practise  the  self-disci- 
pline needed  to  obtain  it;  who  uses  his  liberty  to  put  forth  not  his 
utmost,  but  the  least  possible,  effort;  who  uses  it  not  to  acquire, 
but  to  evade,  a  thorough  education,  fails  to  that  extent  in  his 
duty  to  himself,  to  his  coUege,  to  his  country,  and  to  the  civiliza- 
tion he  inherits.  The  man  who  uses  his  liberty  to  put  forth  his 
utmost  effort  in  college  and  throughout  his  life,  not  only  does 
his  duty,  but  is  helping  to  make  freedom  itself  successful.  He  is 
working  for  a  great  principle  of  human  progress.  He  is  fighting 
the  battle  of  liberty  and  securing  its  victory  in  the  civilization  of 
mankind. 

Never  have  I  been  able  to  understand — and  even  less  than 
ever  in  these  terrible  days,  when  young  men,  on  whom  the 
future  shone  bright  with  hope,  sacrifice  from  a  sense  of  duty 
their  lives,  the  welfare  of  those  dearest  to  them,  and  every- 
thing they  care  for — less  than  ever  can  I  understand  how  any 
man  can  stand  in  safety  on  a  hillside  and  watch  the  struggle  of 
life  in  the  plain  below  without  longing  to  take  part  therein;  how 
he  can  see  the  world  pass  by  without  a  craving  to  make  his  mark, 
however  small,  on  his  day  and  generation.  Many  a  man  who 
would  be  eager  to  join  a  deadly  charge  if  his  country  were  at  war, 
lacks  the  insight  or  imagination  to  perceive  that  the  warfare  of 


a82  •  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

civilization  is  waged  not  more  upon  the  battlefield  than  in  the 
workshop,  at  the  desk,  in  the  laboratory,  and  the  library.  We 
have  learned  in  this  stress  of  nations  that  men  cannot  fight  with- 
out ammunition  well  made  in  abundance;  but  we  do  not  see  that 
the  crucial  matter  in  civilization  is  the  preparedness  of  young 
men  for  the  work  of  the  world;  not  only  an  ample  supply  of  the 
best  material,  but  a  product  moulded  on  the  best  pattern,  tem- 
pered and  finished  to  the  highest  point  of  perfection.  Is  this  the 
ideal  of  a  dreamer  that  cannot  be  realized;  or  is  it  a  vision  which 
young  men  will  see  and  turn  to  a  virile  faith? 


NATIONALIZING  EDUCATION1 
JOHN  DEWEY 

[John  Dewey  (1859 )  was  bom  at  Burlington,  Vermont.  After  com- 
pleting his  college  work  at  the  University  of  Vermont,  he  did  post-graduate 
work  at  Johns  Hopkins  University.  From  1884-1904  he  was  a  member  of 
the  department  of  philosophy  in  the  University  of  Michigan,  being  head  of 
the  department  during  the  latter  part  of  this  period.  In  1902-4  he  was 
director  of  the  school  of  education  of  the  University  of  Chicago.  Since  1904 
he  has  been  professor  of  philosophy  in  Columbia  University.] 

The  words  "nation"  and  "national"  have  two  quite  different 
meanings.  We  cannot  profitably  discuss  the  nationalizing  of 
education  unless  we  are  clear  as  to  the  difference  between  the 
two.  For  one  meaning  indicates  something  desirable,  something 
to  be  cultivated  by  education,  while  the  other  stands  for  some- 
thing to  be  avoided  as  an  evil  plague.  The  idea  which  has 
given  the  movement  toward  nationality,  which  has  been  such 
a  feature  of  the  last  century,  its  social  vitality,  is  the  conscious- 
ness of  a  community  of  history  and  purpose  larger  than  that  of 
the  family,  the  parish,  the  sect,  and  the  province.  The  upbuild- 
ing of  national  states  has  substituted  a  unity  of  feeling  and  aim, 
a  freedom  of  intercourse,  over  wide  areas,  for  earlier  local  isola- 
tions, suspicions,  jealousies,  and  hatreds.  It  has  forced  men  out 
of  narrow  sectionalism  into  membership  in  a  larger  social  unit, 

1From  Proceedings,  National  Education  Association,  1916.   Reprinted  by  permission. 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  283 

and  created  loyalty  to  a  state  which  subordinates  petty  and 
selfish  interests. 

One  cannot  say  this,  however,  without  being  at  once  reminded 
that  nationalism  has  had  another  side.  With  the  possible 
exception  of  our  own  country,  the  national  states  of  the  modern 
world  have  been  built  up  through  conflict.  The  development  of 
a  sense  of  unity  within  a  charmed  area  has  been  accompanied 
by  dislike,  by  hostility,  to  all  without.  Skilful  politicians  and 
other  self-seekers  have  always  known  how  to  play  cleverly  upon 
patriotism  and  upon  ignorance  of  other  peoples,  to  identify 
nationalism  with  latent  hatred  of  other  nations.  Without  exag- 
geration, the  present  world  war  may  be  said  to  be  the  out- 
come of  this  aspect  of  nationalism,  and  to  present  it  in  its  naked 
unloveliness. 

In  the  past  our  geographical  isolation  has  largely  protected 
us  from  the  harsh,  selfish,  and  exclusive  aspect  of  nationalism. 
The  absence  of  pressure  from  without,  the  absence  of  active  and 
urgent  rivalry  and  hostility  of  powerful  neighbors,  has  perhaps 
played  a  part  in  the  failure  to  develop  an  adequate  unity  of 
sentiment  and  idea  for  the  country  as  a  whole.  Individualism 
of  a  go-as-you-please  type  has  had  too  full  swing.  We  have 
an  inherited  jealousy  of  any  strong  national  governing  agencies 
and  we  have  been  inclined  to  let  things  drift  rather  than  to  think 
out  a  central,  controlling  policy.  But  the  effect  of  the  war  has 
been  to  make  us  aware  that  the  days  of  geographical  isolation 
are  at  an  end,  and  also  to  make  us  conscious  that  we  are  lacking 
in  an  integrated  social  sense  and  policy  for  our  country  as  a  whole, 
irrespective  of  classes  and  sections. 

We  are  now  faced  by  the  difficulty  of  developing  the  good 
aspect  of  nationalism  without  its  evil  side — of  developing  a 
nationalism  which  is  the  friend  and  not  the  foe  of  international- 
ism. Since  this  is  a  matter  of  ideas,  of  emotions,  of  intellectual 
and  moral  disposition  and  outlook,  it  depends  for  its  accomplish- 
ment upon  educational  agencies,  not  upon  outward  machinery. 
Among  these  educational  agencies,  the  public  school  takes  first 
rank.  When  some  tune  in  the  remote  future  the  tale  is  summed 
up  and  the  public,  as  distinct  from  the  private  and  merely 


284  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

personal,  achievement  of  the  common  school  is  recorded,  the 
question  which  will  have  to  be  answered  is,  What  has  the 
American  public  school  done  toward  subordinating  a  local, 
provincial,  sectarian,  and  partisan  spirit  of  mind  to  amis  and 
interests  which  are  common  to  all  the  men  and  women  of  the 
country — to  what  extent  has  it  taught  men  to  think  and  feel  in 
ideas  broad  enough  to  be  inclusive  of  the  purposes  and  happiness 
of  all  sections  and  classes?  For  unless  the  agencies  which  form 
the  mind  and  morals  of  the  community  can  prevent  the  opera- 
tion of  those  forces  which  are  always  making  for  a  division  of 
interests,  class  and  sectional  ideas  and  feelings  will  become 
dominant,  and  our  democracy  will  fall  to  pieces. 

Unfortunately  at  the  present  time  one  result  of  the  excitement 
which  the  war  has  produced  is  that  many  influential  and  well- 
meaning  persons  attempt  to  foster  the  growth  of  an  inclusive 
nationalism  by  appeal  to  our  fears,  our  suspicions,  our  jealousies, 
and  our  latent  hatreds.  They  would  make  the  measure  of  our 
national  preparedness  our  readiness  to  meet  other  nations  in 
destructive  war  rather  than  our  fitness  to  cooperate  with  them 
in  the  constructive  tasks  of  peace.  They  are  so  disturbed  by  what 
has  been  revealed  of  internal  division,  of  lack  of  complete  national 
integration,  that  they  have  lost  faith  in  the  slow  policies  of 
education.  They  would  kindle  a  sense  of  our  dependence  upon 
one  another  by  making  us  afraid  of  peoples  outside  of  our  border; 
they  would  bring  about  unity  within  by  laying  stress  upon  our 
separateness  from  others.  The  situation  makes  it  all  the  more 
necessary  that  those  concerned  with  education  should  withstand 
popular  clamor  for  a  nationalism  based  upon  hysterical  excited- 
ness  or  mechanical  drill,  or  a  combination  of  the  two.  We  must 
ask  what  a  real  nationalism,  a  real  Americanism,  is  like.  For 
unless  we  know  our  own  character  and  purpose,  we  are  not 
likely  to  be  intelligent  in  our  selection  of  the  means  to  further 
them. 

I  want  to  mention  only  two  elements  in  the  nationalism  which 
our  education  should  cultivate.  The  first  is  that  the  American 
nation  is  itself  complex  and  compound.  Strictly  speaking,  it  is 
interracial  and  international  in  its  make-up.  It  is  composed  of 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  285 

a  multitude  of  peoples  speaking  different  tongues,  inheriting 
diverse  traditions,  cherishing  varying  ideals  of  life.  This  fact 
is  basic  to  our  nationalism  as  distinct  from  that  of  other  peoples. 
Our  national  motto,  "One  from  Many,"  cuts  deep  and  extends 
far.  It  denotes  a  fact  which  doubtless  adds  to  the  difficulty  of 
getting  a  genuine  unity.  But  it  also  immensely  enriches  the 
possibilities  of  the  result  to  be  attained.  No  matter  how  loudly 
anyone  proclaims  his  Americanism,  if  he  assumes  that  any  one 
racial  strain,  any  one  component  culture,  no  matter  how  early 
settled  it  was  in  our  territory,  or  how  effective  it  has  proved  in 
its  own  land,  is  to  furnish  a  pattern  to  which  all  other  strains 
and  cultures  are  to  conform,  he  is  a  traitor  to  an  American  nation- 
alism. Our  unity  cannot  be  a  homogeneous  thing  like  that  of  the 
separate  states  of  Europe  from  which  our  population  is  drawn; 
it  must  be  a  unity  created  by  drawing  out  and  composing  into  a 
harmonious  whole  the  best,  the  most  characteristic,  which  each 
contributing  race  and  people  has  to  offer. 

I  find  that  many  who  talk  the  loudest  about  the  need  of  a 
supreme  and  unified  Americanism  of  spirit  really  mean  some 
special  code  or  tradition  to  which  they  happen  to  be  attached. 
They  have  some  pet  tradition  which  they  would  impose  upon 
all.  In  thus  measuring  the  scope  of  Americanism  by  some  single 
element  which  enters  into  it  they  are  themselves  false  to  the 
spirit  of  America.  Neither  Englandism  nor  New  Englandism, 
neither  Puritan  nor  Cavalier,  any  more  than  Teuton  or  Slav, 
can  do  anything  but  furnish  one  note  in  a  vast  symphony. 

The  way  to  deal  with  hyphenism,  in  other  words,  is  to  wel- 
come it,  but  to  welcome  it  in  the  sense  of  extracting  from  each 
people  its  special  good,  so  that  it  shall  surrender  into  a  common 
fund  of  wisdom  and  experience  what  it  especially  has  to  contri- 
bute. All  of  these  surrenders  and  contributions  taken  together 
create  the  national  spirit  of  America.  The  dangerous  thing  is 
for  each  factor  to  isolate  itself,  to  try  to  live  off  its  past,  and  then 
to  attempt  to  impose  itself  upon  other  elements,  or,  at  least,  to 
keep  itself  intact  and  thus  refuse  to  accept  what  other  cultures 
have  to  offer,  so  as  thereby  to  be  transmuted  into  authentic 
Americanism. 


286  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

In  what  is  rightly  objected  to  as  hyphenism,  the  hyphen  has 
become  something  which  separates  one  people  from  other  peo- 
ples, and  thereby  prevents  American  nationalism.  Such  terms  as 
Irish-American  or  Hebrew-American  or  German-American  are 
false  terms  because  they  seem  to  assume  something  which  is 
already  in  existence  called  America,  to  which  the  other  factor 
may  be  externally  hitched  on.  The  fact  is,  the  genuine  American, 
the  typical  American,  is  himself  a  hyphenated  character.  This 
does  not  mean  that  he  is  part  American  and  that  some  foreign 
ingredient  is  then  added.  It  means  that,  as  I  have  said,  he  is 
international  and  interracial  in  his  make-up.  He  is  not  Ameri- 
can plus  Pole  or  German.  But  the  American  is  himself  Pole- 
German-English-French-Spanish-Italian-Greek  -  Irish  -  Scandina- 
vian-Bohemian-Jew and  so  on.  The  point  is  to  see  to  it  that  the 
hyphen  connects  instead  of  separates.  And  this  means  at  least 
that  our  public  schools  shall  teach  each  factor  to  respect  every 
other,  and  shall  take  pains  to  enlighten  all  as  to  the  great  past 
contributions  of  every  strain  in  our  composite  make-up.  I  wish 
our  teaching  of  American  history  in  the  schools  would  take  more 
account  of  the  great  waves  of  migration  by  which  our  land  for 
over  three  centuries  has  been  continuously  built  up,  and  made 
every  pupil  conscious  of  the  rich  breadth  of  our  national  make- 
up. When  every  pupil  recognizes  all  the  factors  which  have  gone 
into  our  being,  he  will  continue  to  prize  and  reverence  that  com- 
ing from  his  own  past,  but  he  will  think  of  it  as  honored  in  being 
simply  one  factor  in  forming  a  whole,  nobler  and  finer  than  itself. 

In  short,  unless  our  education  is  nationalized  in  a  way  which 
recognizes  that  the  peculiarity  of  our  nationalism  is  its  inter- 
nationalism, we  shall  breed  enmity  and  division  in  our  frantic 
efforts  to  secure  unity.  The  teachers  of  the  country  know  this 
fact  much  better  than  do  many  of  its  politicians.  While  too  often 
politicians  have  been  fostering  a  vicious  hyphenatedism  and 
sectionalism  as  a  bid  for  votes,  teachers  have  been  engaged  in 
transmuting  beliefs  and  feelings  once  divided  and  opposed,  into 
a  new  thing  under  the  sun — a  national  spirit  inclusive  not  exclu- 
sive, friendly  not  jealous.  This  they  have  done  by  the  influence 
of  personal  contact,  cooperative  intercourse,  and  sharing  in 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  287 

common  tasks  and  hopes.  The  teacher  who  has  been  an  active 
agent  in  furthering  the  common  struggle  of  native-born,  African, 
Jew,  Italian,  and  perhaps  a  score  of  other  peoples,  to  attain  eman- 
cipation and  enlightenment  will  never  become  a  party  to  a  con- 
ception of  America  as  a  nation  which  conceives  of  its  history  and 
its  hopes  as  less  broad  than  those  of  humanity — let  politicians 
clamor  for  their  own  ends  as  they  will. 

The  other  point  hi  the  constitution  of  a  genuine  American 
nationalism  to  which  I  invite  attention  is  that  we  have  been 
occupied  during  the  greater  part  of  our  history  in  subduing 
nature,  not  one  another  or  other  peoples.  I  once  heard  two 
foreign  visitors  coming  from  different  countries  discuss  what  had 
been  impressed  upon  them  as  the  chief  trait  of  the  American 
people.  One  said  vigor,  youthful  and  buoyant  energy.  The  other 
said  it  was  kindness,  the  disposition  to  live  and  let  live,  the 
absence  of  envy  at  the  success  of  others.  I  like  to  think  that 
while  both  of  these  ascribed  traits  have  the  same  cause  back  of 
them,  the  latter  statement  goes  deeper.  Not  that  we  have  more 
virtue,  native  or  acquired,  than  others,  but  that  we  have  had 
more  room,  more  opportunity.  Consequently,  the  same  con- 
ditions which  have  put  a  premium  upon  active  and  hopeful 
energy  have  permitted  the  kindlier  instincts  of  man  to  express 
themselves.  The  spaciousness  of  a  continent  not  previously 
monopolized  by  man  has  stimulated  vigor  and  has  also  diverted 
activity  from  the  struggle  against  fellowman  into  the  struggle 
against  nature.  When  men  make  their  gains  by  fighting  in 
common  a  wilderness,  they  have  not  the  motive  for  mutual  dis- 
trust which  comes  when  they  get  ahead  only  by  fighting  one 
another.  I  recently  heard  a  story  which  seems  to  me  to  have 
something  typical  about  it.  Some  manufacturers  were  discussing 
the  problem  of  labor.  They  were  loud  in  their  complaints.  They 
were  bitter  against  the  exactions  of  unions,  and  full  of  tales  of  an 
inefficiency  which  seemed  to  them  calculated.  Then  one  of 
them  said:  "Oh,  well!  Poor  devils!  They  haven't  much  of  a 
chance  and  have  to  do  what  they  can  to  hold  their  own.  If 
we  were  in  their  place,  we  should  be  just  the  same."  And  the 
others  nodded  assent  and  the  conversation  lapsed.  I  call  this 


288  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

characteristic,  for  if  there  was  not  an  ardent  sympathy,  there 
was  at  least  a  spirit  of  toleration  and  passive  recognition. 

But  with  respect  to  this  point  as  well  as  with  respect  to  our 
composite  make-up,  the  situation  is  changing.  We  no  longer 
have  a  large  unoccupied  continent.  Pioneer  days  are  past,  and 
natural  resources  are  possessed.  There  is  danger  that  the  same 
causes  which  have  set  the  hand  of  man  against  his  neighbor 
in  other  countries  will  have  the  same  effect  here.  Instead  of 
sharing  in  a  common  fight  against  nature,  we  are  already  start- 
ing to  fight  against  one  another,  class  against  class,  haves  against 
have-nots.  The  change  puts  a  definite  responsibility  upon  the 
schools  to  sustain  our  true  national  spirit.  The  virtues  of  mutual 
esteem,  of  human  forbearance,  and  well-wishing,  which  in  our 
earlier  days  were  the  unconscious  products  of  circumstances, 
must  now  be  the  conscious  fruit  of  an  education  which  forms 
the  deepest  springs  of  character. 

Teachers,  above  all  others,  have  occasion  to  be  distressed 
when  the  earlier  idealism  of  welcome  to  the  oppressed  is  treated 
as  a  weak  sentimentalism,  when  sympathy  for  the  unfortunate 
and  those  who  have  not  had  a  fair  chance  is  regarded  as  a  weak 
indulgence  fatal  to  efficiency.  Our  traditional  disposition  in 
these  respects  must  now  become  a  central  motive  in  public 
education,  not  as  a  matter  of  condescension  or  patronizing,  but 
an  essential  to  the  maintenance  of  a  truly  American  spirit.  All 
this  puts  a  responsibility  upon  the  schools  which  can  be  met  only 
by  widening  the  scope  of  educational  facilities.  The  schools 
have  now  to  make  up  to  the  disinherited  masses  by  conscious 
instruction,  by  the  development  of  personal  power,  skill,  ability, 
and  initiative,  for  the  loss  of  external  opportunities  consequent 
upon  the  passing  of  our  pioneer  days.  Otherwise  power  is  likely 
to  pass  more  and  more  into  the  hands  of  the  wealthy,  and  we 
shall  end  with  this  same  alliance  between  intellectual  and  artistic 
culture  and  economic  power  due  to  riches,  which  has  been  the 
curse  of  every  civilization  hi  the  past,  and  which  our  fathers  in 
their  democratic  idealism  thought  this  nation  was  to  put  an 
end  to. 

Since  the  idea  of  the  nation  is  equal  opportunity  for  all,  to 


EDUCATED  LEADERSHIP  289 

nationalize  education  means  to  use  the  schools  as  a  means  for 
making  this  idea  effective.  There  was  a  time  when  this  could  be 
done  more  or  less  well  simply  by  providing  schoolhouses,  desks, 
blackboards,  and  perhaps  books.  But  that  day  has  passed. 
Opportunities  can  be  equalized  only  as  the  schools  make  it 
their  active  serious  business  to  enable  all  alike  to  become 
masters  of  their  own  industrial  fate.  That  growing  movement 
which  is  called  industrial  or  vocational  education  now  hangs  in 
the  scales.  If  it  is  so  constructed  in  practice  as  to  produce  merely 
more  competent  hands  for  subordinate  clerical  and  shop 
positions,  if  its  purpose  is  shaped  to  drill  boys  and  girls  into 
certain  forms  of  automatic  skill  which  will  make  them  useful  hi 
carrying  out  the  plans  of  others,  it  means  that,  instead  of  nation- 
alizing education  in  the  spirit  of  our  nation,  we  have  given  up 
the  battle,  and  decided  to  refeudalize  education. 

I  have  said  nothing  about  the  point  which  my  title  most 
naturally  suggests — changes  in  administrative  methods  which 
will  put  the  resources  of  the  whole  nation  at  the  disposition  of 
the  more  backward  and  less  fortunate  portions,  meaning  by 
resources  not  only  money  but  expert  advice  and  guidance  of 
every  sort.  I  have  no  doubt  that  we  shall  move  in  the  future 
away  from  a  merely  regional  control  of  the  public  schools  in 
the  direction  of  a  more  central  regulation.  I  say  nothing  about 
this  phase  of  the  matter  at  this  time,  not  only  because  it  brings 
up  technical  questions,  but  because  this  side  of  the  matter  is 
but  the  body,  the  mechanism  of  a  nationalized  education.  To 
nationalize  American  education  is  to  use  education  to  promote 
our  national  idea,  which  is  the  idea  of  democracy.  This  is  the 
soul,  the  spirit,  of  a  nationalized  education,  and,  unless  the  ad- 
ministrative changes  are  executed  so  as  to  embody  this  soul, 
they  will  mean  simply  the  development  of  red  tape,  a  mechanical 
uniformity  and  a  deadening  supervision  from  above. 

Just  because  the  circumstances  of  the  war  have  brought  the 
idea  of  the  nation  and  the  national  to  the  foreground  of  every- 
one's thoughts,  the  most  important  thing  is  to  bear  in  mind  that 
there  are  nations  and  nations,  this  kind  of  nationalism  and  that. 
Unless  I  am  mistaken,  there  are  some  now  using  the  cry  of  an 
s 


2QQ  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

American  nationalism,  of  an  intensified  national  patriotism, 
to  further  ideas  which  characterize  the  European  nations, 
especially  those  most  active  hi  the  war,  but  which  are  treasonable 
to  the  ideal  of  our  nation.  Therefore,  I  have  taken  this  part  of 
your  time  to  remind  you  of  the  fact  that  our  nation  and  democ- 
racy are  equivalent  terms;  that  our  democracy  means  amity  and 
good  will  to  all  humanity  (including  those  beyond  our  border), 
and  equal  opportunity  for  all  within.  Since  as  a  nation  we  are 
composed  of  representatives  of  all  nations  who  have  come  here 
to  live  in  peace  with  one  another  and  to  escape  the  enmities  and 
jealousies  which  characterize  Old  World  nations,  to  nationalize 
our  education  means  to  make  it  an  instrument  in  the  active  and 
constant  suppression  of  the  war  spirit  and  in  the  positive  culti- 
vation of  sentiments  of  respect  and  friendship  for  all  men  and 
women,  wherever  they  live.  Since  our  democracy  means  the 
substitution  of  equal  opportunity  for  all  for  the  Old  World 
ideal  of  unequal  opportunity  for  different  classes,  and  the 
limitation  of  the  individual  by  the  class  to  which  he  belongs,  to 
nationalize  our  education  is  to  make  the  public  school  an  ener- 
getic and  willing  instrument  in  developing  initiative,  courage, 
power,  and  personal  ability  in  each  individual.  If  we  can  get  our 
education  nationalized  in  spirit  in  these  directions,  the  national- 
izing of  the  administrative  machinery  will  in  the  end  take  care 
of  itself.  So  I  appeal  to  teachers  in  the  face  of  every  hysterical 
wave  of  emotion,  and  of  every  subtle  appeal  of  sinister  class 
interest,  to  remember  that  they,  above  all  others,  are  the  con- 
secrated servants  of  the  democratic  ideas  in  which  alone  this 
country  is  truly  a  distinctive  nation — ideas  of  friendly  and 
helpful  intercourse  between  all  and  the  equipment  of  every 
individual  to  serve  the  community  by  bis  own  best  powers  in 
his  own  best  way. 


CHANGES    AND    ADJUSTMENTS 

EXPERIMENTS  IN  GOVERNMENT1 
ELIHTJ  ROOT 

[Elihu  Root  (1845 )  was  born  in  Clinton,  New  York.   After  being 

graduated  from  Hamilton  College,  he  studied  law  and  has  practised  his  pro- 
fession during  the  greater  part  of  his  life  in  New  York  City.  He  entered  public 
life  as  secretary  of  war  under  President  McKinley,  and  was  secretary  of 
state  during  President  Roosevelt's  administration.  After  serving  one  term 
as  senator  from  New  York,  he  resumed  the  practice  of  law.  He  has  distin- 
guished himself  signally  both  as  a  lawyer  and  a  publicist.  His  lectures  at 
Princeton  University  in  1913  under  the  Stafford  Little  Endowment — from 
which  the  selection  here  given  is  taken — were  forcible  pleas  for  caution  in 
adopting  innovations  in  government.] 

There  are  two  separate  processes  going  on  among  the  civilized 
nations  at  the  present  time.  One  is  an  assault  by  Socialism 
against  the  individualism  which  underlies  the  social  system  of 
western  civilization.  The  other  is  an  assault  against  existing 
institutions  upon  the  ground  that  they  do  not  adequately  pro- 
tect and  develop  the  existing  social  order.  It  is  of  this  latter 
process  in  our  own  country  that  I  wish  to  speak,  and  I  assume 
an  agreement  that  the  right  of  individual  liberty  and  the  in- 
separable right  of  private  property  which  lie  at  the  foundation 
of  our  modern  civilization  ought  to  be  maintained. 

The  conditions  of  life  in  America  have  changed  very  much 
since  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  was  adopted.  In 
1787  each  state  entering  into  the  Federal  Union  had  preserved 
the  separate  organic  life  of  the  original  colony.  Each  had  its 
center  of  social  and  business  and  political  life.  Each  was  sepa- 
rated from  the  others  by  the  barriers  of  slow  and  difficult  com- 

iFrom  Experiments  in  Government.  (Copyright,  1913,  Princeton  University  Press.) 
Reprinted  by  permission. 

2QI 


2Q2  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

munication.  In  a  vast  territory,  without  railroads  or  steamships 
or  telegraph  or  telephone,  each  community  lived  within  itself. 

Now,  there  has  been  a  general  social  and  industrial  rearrange- 
ment. Production  and  commerce  pay  no  attention  to  state  lines. 
The  life  of  the  country  is  no  longer  grouped  about  state  capi- 
tals, but  about  the  great  centers  of  continental  production  and 
trade.  The  organic  growth  which  must  ultimately  determine 
the  form  of  institutions  has  been  away  from  the  mere  union  of 
states  toward  the  union  of  individuals  in  the  relation  of  national 
citizenship. 

The  same  causes  have  greatly  reduced  the  independence  of 
personal  and  family  life.  In  the  eighteenth  century  life  was 
simple.  The  producer  and  consumer  were  near  together  and 
could  find  each  other.  Everyone  who  had  an  equivalent  to  give 
in  property  or  service  could  readily  secure  the  support  of  him- 
self and  his  family  without  asking  anything  from  government 
except  the  preservation  of  order.  Today  almost  ah1  Americans 
are  dependent  upon  the  action  of  a  great  number  of  other  per- 
sons, mostly  unknown.  About  half  of  our  people  are  crowded 
into  the  cities  and  large  towns.  Their  food,  clothes,  fuel,  light, 
water — all  come  from  distant  sources,  of  which  they  are  in  the 
mam  ignorant,  through  a  vast,  complicated  machinery  of  pro- 
duction and  distribution  with  which  they  have  little  direct  rela- 
tion. If  anything  occurs  to  interfere  with  the  working  of  the 
machinery,  the  consumer  is  individually  helpless.  To  be  cer- 
tain that  he  and  his  family  may  continue  to  live,  he  must  seek 
the  power  of  combination  with  others,  and  in  the  end  he  in- 
evitably calls  upon  that  great  combination  of  aU  citizens  which 
we  call  government  to  do  something  more  than  merely  keep  the 
peace — to  regulate  the  machinery  of  production  and  distribu- 
tion and  safeguard  it  from  interference  so  that  it  shall  continue 
to  work. 

A  similar  change  has  taken  place  in  the  conditions  under 
which  a  great  part  of  our  people  engage  in  the  industries  by 
which  they  get  their  living.  Under  comparatively  simple  in- 
dustrial conditions  the  relation  between  employer  and  employee 
was  mainly  a  relation  of  individual  to  individual,  with  individual 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  *93 

freedom  of  contract  and  freedom  of  opportunity  essential  to 
equality  in  the  commerce  of  life.  Now,  in  the  great  manufactur- 
ing, mining,  and  transportation  industries  of  the  country,  in- 
stead of  the  free  give  and  take  of  individual  contract,  there  is 
substituted  a  vast  system  of  collective  bargaining  between  great 
masses  of  men  organized  and  acting  through  their  representa- 
tives, or  the  individual  on  the  one  side  accepts  what  he  can  get 
from  superior  power  on  the  other.  In  the  movement  of  these 
mighty  forces  of  organization  the  individual  laborer,  the  indi- 
vidual stockholder,  the  individual  consumer,  is  helpless. 

There  has  been  another  change  of  conditions  through  the 
development  of  political  organization.  The  theory  of  political 
activity  which  had  its  origin  approximately  in  the  administra- 
tion of  President  Jackson,  and  which  is  characterized  by  Marcy's 
declaration  that  "to  the  victors  belong  the  spoils,"  tended  to 
make  the  possession  of  office  the  primary  and  all-absorbing  pur- 
pose of  political  conflict.  A  complicated  system  of  party  organ- 
ization and  representation  grew  up  under  which  a  disciplined 
body  of  party  workers  in  each  state  supported  one  another, 
controlled  the  machinery  of  nomination,  and  thus  controlled 
nominations.  The  members  of  state  legislatures  and  other 
officers,  when  elected,  felt  a  more  acute  responsibility  to  the 
organization  which  could  control  their  renomination  than  to  the 
electors,  and  therefore  became  accustomed  to  shape  their  con- 
duct according  to  the  wishes  of  the  nominating  organization. 
Accordingly  the  real  power  of  government  came  to  be  vested  to 
a  high  degree  in  these  unofficial  political  organizations,  and  where 
there  was  a  strong  man  at  the  head  of  an  organization  his  con- 
trol came  to  be  something  very  closely  approaching  dictator- 
ship. Another  feature  of  this  system  aggravated  its  evils.  As 
population  grew,  political  campaigns  became  more  expensive. 
At  the  same  time,  as  wealth  grew,  corporations  for  production 
and  transportation  increased  in  capital  and  extent  of  operations 
and  became  more  dependent  upon  the  protection  or  toleration 
of  government.  They  found  a  ready  means  to  secure  this  by 
contributing  heavily  to  the  campaign  funds  of  political  organiza- 
tions, and  therefore  their  influence  played  a  large  part  in  deter- 


2Q4  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

mining  who  should  be  nominated  and  elected  to  office.  So  that 
in  many  states  political  organizations  controlled  the  operations 
of  government,  in  accordance  with  the  wishes  of  the  managers 
of  the  great  corporations.  Under  these  circumstances  our  govern- 
mental institutions  were  not  working  as  they  were  intended  to 
work,  and  a  desire  to  break  up  and  get  away  from  this  extra 
constitutional  method  of  controlling  our  constitutional  govern- 
ment has  caused  a  great  part  of  the  new  political  methods  of  the 
last  few  years. 

It  is  manifest  that  the  laws  which  were  entirely  adequate 
under  the  conditions  of  a  century  ago  to  secure  individual  and 
public  welfare  must  be  in  many  respects  inadequate  to  accomplish 
the  same  results  under  all  these  new  conditions;  and  our  people 
are  now  engaged  in  the  difficult  but  imperative  duty  of  adapting 
their  laws  to  the  life  of  today.  The  changes  in  conditions  have 
come  very  rapidly,  and  a  good  deal  of  experiment  will  be  neces- 
sary to  find  out  just  what  government  can  do  and  ought  to  do 
to  meet  them. 

The  process  of  devising  and  trying  new  laws  to  meet  new 
conditions  naturally  leads  to  the  question  whether  we  need  not 
merely  to  make  new  laws,  but  also  to  modify  the  principles 
upon  which  our  government  is  based  and  the  institutions  of 
government  designed  for  the  application  of  those  principles  to 
the  affairs  of  life.  Upon  this  question  it  is  of  the  utmost  im- 
portance that  we  proceed  with  considerable  wisdom. 

By  institutions  of  government  I  mean  the  established  rule  or 
order  of  action  through  which  the  sovereign  (in  our  case  the 
sovereign  people)  attains  the  ends  of  government.  The  govern- 
mental institutions  of  Great  Britain  have  been  established  by 
the  growth  through  many  centuries  of  a  great  body  of  accepted 
rules  and  customs  which,  taken  together,  are  called  the  British 
Constitution.  In  this  country  we  have  set  forth  in  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  the  principles  which  we  consider  to  lie  at 
the  basis  of  civil  society  "that  all  men  are  created  equal;  that 
they  are  endowed,  by  their  Creator,  with  certain  unalienable 
rights;  that  among  these  are  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of 
happiness.  That  to  secure  these  rights,  governments  are  insti- 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  295 

tuted  among  men,  deriving  their  just  powers  from  the  consent 
of  the  governed." 

In  our  Federal  and  state  constitutions  we  have  established  the 
institutions  through  which  these  rights  are  to  be  secured.  We 
have  declared  what  officers  shall  make  the  laws,  what  officers 
shall  execute  them,  what  officers  shall  sit  in  judgment  upon  claims 
of  right  under  them.  We  have  prescribed  how  these  officers 
shall  be  selected  and  the  tenure  by  which  they  shall  hold  their 
offices.  We  have  limited  them  in  the  powers  which  they  are  to 
exercise,  and,  where  it  has  been  deemed  necessary,  we  have  im- 
posed specific  duties  upon  them.  The  body  of  rules  thus  pre- 
scribed constitute  the  governmental  institutions  of  the  United 
States. 

When  proposals  are  made  to  change  these  institutions  there 
are  certain  general  considerations  which  should  be  observed. 

The  first  consideration  is  that  free  government  is  impossible 
except  through  prescribed  and  established  governmental  insti- 
tutions, which  work  out  the  ends  of  government  through  many 
separate  human  agents,  each  doing  his  part  in  obedience  to  law. 
Popular  will  cannot  execute  itself  directly  except  through  a  mob. 
Popular  will  cannot  get  itself  executed  through  an  irresponsible 
executive,  for  that  is  simple  autocracy.  An  executive  limited 
only  by  the  direct  expression  of  popular  will  cannot  be  held  to 
responsibility  against  his  will,  because,  having  possession  of  all 
the  powers  of  government,  he  can  prevent  any  true,  free,  and 
general  expression  adverse  to  himself,  and  unless  he  yields  vol- 
untarily he  can  be  overturned  only  by  a  revolution.  The 
familiar  Spanish-American  dictatorships  are  illustrations  of  this. 
A  dictator  once  established  by  what  is  or  is  alleged  to  be  public 
choice  never  permits  an  expression  of  public  will  which  will  dis- 
place him,  and  he  goes  out  only  through  a  new  revolution  be- 
cause he  alone  controls  the  machinery  through  which  he  could 
be  displaced  peaceably.  A  system  with  a  plebiscite  at  one  end 
and  Louis  Napoleon  at  the  other  could  not  give  France  free 
government;  and  it  was  only  after  the  humiliation  of  defeat  in 
a  great  war  and  the  horrors  of  the  Commune  that  the  French 
people  were  able  to  establish  a  government  which  would  really 


296  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

execute  their  will  through  carefully  devised  institutions  in  which 
they  gave  their  chief  executive  very  little  power  indeed. 

We  should,  therefore,  reject  every  proposal  which  involves 
the  idea  that  the  people  can  rule  merely  by  voting,  or  merely 
by  voting  and  having  one  man  or  group  of  men  to  execute 
their  will. 

A  second  consideration  is  that  in  estimating  the  value  of 
any  system  of  governmental  institutions  due  regard  must  be 
had  to  the  true  functions  of  government  and  to  the  limitations 
imposed  by  nature  upon  what  it  is  possible  for  government  to 
accomplish.  We  all  know,  of  course,  that  we  cannot  abolish  all 
the  evils  in  this  world  by  statute  or  by  the  enforcement  of 
statutes,  nor  can  we  prevent  the  inexorable  law  of  nature  which 
decrees  that  suffering  shall  follow  vice,  and  all  the  evil  passions 
and  folly  of  mankind.  Law  cannot  give  to  depravity  the  re- 
wards of  virtue,  to  indolence  the  rewards  of  industry,  to  indif- 
ference the  rewards  of  ambition,  or  to  ignorance  the  rewards  of 
learning.  The  utmost  that  government  can  do  is  measurably  to 
protect  men,  not  against  the  wrong  they  do  themselves,  but 
against  wrong  done  by  others,  and  to  promote  the  long,  slow 
process  of  educating  mind  and  character  to  a  better  knowledge 
and  nobler  standards  of  life  and  conduct.  We  know  all  this,  but 
when  we  see  how  much  misery  there  is  in  the  world  and  instinc- 
tively cry  out  against  it,  and  when  we  see  some  things  that  gov- 
ernment may  do  to  mitigate  it,  we  are  apt  to  forget  how  little, 
after  all,  it  is  possible  for  any  government  to  do,  and  to  hold  the 
particular  government  of  the  tune  and  place  to  a  standard  of 
responsibility  which  no  government  can  possibly  meet.  The 
chief  motive  power  which  has  moved  mankind  along  the  course 
of  development  which  we  call  the  progress  of  civilization  has 
been  the  sum  total  of  intelligent  selfishness  in  a  vast  number  of 
individuals,  each  working  for  his  own  support,  his  own  gain,  his 
own  betterment.  It  is  that  which  has  cleared  the  forests  and 
cultivated  the  fields  and  built  the  ships  and  railroads,  made  the 
discoveries  and  inventions,  covered  the  earth  with  commerce, 
softened  by  intercourse  the  enmities  of  nations  and  races,  and 
made  possible  the  wonders  of  literature  and  of  art.  Gradually, 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  297 

during  the  long  process,  selfishness  has  grown  more  intelligent, 
with  a  broader  view  of  individual  benefit  from  the  common  good, 
and  gradually  the  influences  of  nobler  standards  of  altruism,  of 
justice,  and  human  sympathy  have  impressed  themselves  upon 
the  conception  of  right  conduct  among  civilized  men.  But  the 
complete  control  of  such  motives  will  be  the  millennium.  Any 
attempt  to  enforce  a  millennial  standard  now  by  law  must  neces- 
sarily fail,  and  any  judgment  which  assumes  government's 
responsibility  to  enforce  such  a  standard  must  be  an  unjust 
judgment.  Indeed,  no  such  standard  can  ever  be  forced.  It 
must  come,  not  by  superior  force,  but  from  the  changed  nature 
of  man,  from  his  willingness  to  be  altogether  just  and  merciful. 

A  third  consideration  is  that  it  is  not  merely  useless,  but 
injurious  for  government  to  attempt  too  much.  It  is  manifest 
that  to  enable  it  to  deal  with  the  new  conditions  I  have  de- 
scribed we  must  invest  government  with  authority  to  interfere 
with  the  individual  conduct  of  the  citizen  to  a  degree  hitherto 
unknown  in  this  country.  When  government  undertakes  to 
give  the  individual  citizen  protection  by  regulating  the  conduct 
of  others  toward  him  in  the  field  where  formerly  he  protected 
himself  by  his  freedom  of  contract,  it  is  limiting  the  liberty  of  the 
citizen  whose  conduct  is  regulated  and  taking  a  step  in  the  direc- 
tion of  paternal  government.  While  the  new  conditions  of  in- 
dustrial life  make  it  plainly  necessary  that  many  such  steps  shall 
be  taken,  they  should  be  taken  only  so  far  as  they  are  necessary 
and  are  effective.  Interference  with  individual  liberty  by  gov- 
ernment should  be  jealously  watched  and  restrained,  because 
the  habit  of  undue  interference  destroys  that  independence  of 
character  without  which  in  its  citizens  no  free  government  can 
endure. 

We  should  not  forget  that  while  institutions  receive  their 
form  from  national  character,  they  have  a  powerful  reflex  in- 
fluence upon  that  character.  Just  so  far  as  a  nation  allows  its 
institutions  to  be  moulded  by  its  weaknesses  of  character  rather 
than  by  its  strength,  it  creates  an  influence  to  increase  weakness 
at  the  expense  of  strength. 

The  habit  of  undue  interference  by  government  in  private 


298  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

affairs  breeds  the  habit  of  undue  reliance  upon  government  in 
private  affairs  at  the  expense  of  individual  initiative,  energy, 
enterprise,  courage,  independent  manhood. 

The  strength  of  self-government  and  the  motive  power  of 
progress  must  be  found  in  the  characters  of  the  individual 
citizens  who  make  up  a  nation.  Weaken  individual  character 
among  a  people  by  comfortable  reliance  upon  paternal  govern- 
ment and  a  nation  soon  becomes  incapable  of  free  self-govern- 
ment and  fit  only  to  be  governed:  the  higher  and  nobler  qualities 
of  national  life  that  make  for  ideals  and  effort  and  achievement 
become  atrophied  and  the  nation  is  decadent. 

A  fourth  consideration  is  that  in  the  nature  of  things  all 
government  must  be  imperfect  because  men  are  imperfect. 
Every  system  has  its  shortcomings  and  inconveniences;  and 
these  are  seen  and  felt  as  they  exist  in  the  system  under  which 
we  live,  while  the  shortcomings  and  inconveniences  of  other 
systems  are  forgotten  or  ignored. 

It  is  not  unusual  to  see  governmental  methods  reformed  and 
after  a  time,  long  enough  to  forget  the  evils  that  caused  the 
change,  to  have  a  new  movement  for  a  reform  which  consists  in 
changing  back  to  substantially  the  same  old  methods  that  were 
cast  out  by  the  first  reform. 

The  recognition  of  shortcomings  or  inconveniences  in  govern- 
ment is  not  by  itself  sufficient  to  warrant  a  change  of  system. 
There  should  be  also  an  effort  to  estimate  and  compare  the  short- 
comings and  inconveniences  of  the  system  to  be  substituted,  for 
although  they  may  be  different  they  will  certainly  exist. 

A  fifth  consideration  is  that  whatever  changes  in  government 
ought  to  be  made,  we  should  follow  the  method  which  under- 
takes as  one  of  its  cardinal  points  to  hold  fast  that  which  is  good. 
Francis  Lieber,  whose  affection  for  the  country  of  his  birth 
equaled  his  loyalty  to  the  country  of  his  adoption,  once  said: 

"There  is  this  difference  between  the  English,  French,  and  Germans: 
That  the  English  only  change  what  is  necessary  and  as  far  as  it  is  neces- 
sary; the  French  plunge  into  all  sorts  of  novelties  by  whole  masses,  get  into 
a  chaos,  see  that  they  are  fools,  and  retrace  their  steps  as  quickly,  with  a 
high  degree  of  practical  sense  in  all  this  impracticability;  the  Germans 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  200 

attempt  no  change  without  first  recurring  to  first  principles  and  metaphysics 
beyond  them,  systematizing  the  smallest  details  in  their  minds;  and  when 
at  last  they  mean  to  apply  all  their  meditation,  opportunity,  with  its  wide 
and  swift  wings  of  a  gull,  is  gone." 

This  was  written  more  than  sixty  years  ago,  before  the  present 
French  Republic  and  the  present  German  Empire,  and  Lieber 
would  doubtless  have  modified  his  conclusions  in  view  of  those 
great  achievements  in  government  if  he  were  writing  today. 
But  he  does  correctly  indicate  the  differences  of  method  and 
the  dangers  avoided  by  the  practical  course  which  he  ascribes 
to  the  English  and  in  accordance  with  which  the  great  structure 
of  British  and  American  liberty  has  been  built  up  generation 
after  generation  and  century  after  century.  Through  all  the 
seven  hundred  years  since  Magna  Charta  we  have  been  shaping, 
adjusting,  adapting  our  system  to  the  new  conditions  of  life  as 
they  have  arisen,  but  we  have  always  held  on  to  everything 
essentially  good  that  we  have  ever  had  in  the  system.  We  have 
never  undertaken  to  begin  over  again  and  build  up  a  new  system 
under  the  idea  that  we  could  do  it  better.  We  have  never  let  go 
of  Magna  Charta  or  the  Bill  of  Rights  or  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  or  the  Constitution.  When  we  take  account  of 
all  that  governments  have  sought  to  do  and  have  failed  to  do  in 
this  selfish  and  sinful  world,  we  find  that  as  a  rule  the  applica- 
tion of  new  theories  of  government,  though  devised  by  the  most 
brilliant  constructive  genius,  have  availed  but  little  to  preserve 
the  people  of  any  considerable  regions  of  the  earth  for  any  long 
periods  from  the  evils  of  despotism  on  the  one  hand  or  of  anarchy 
on  the  other,  or  to  raise  any  considerable  portion  of  the  mass  of 
mankind  above  the  hard  conditions  of  oppression  and  misery. 
And  we  find  that  our  system  of  government  which  has  been  built 
up  in  this  practical  way  through  so  many  centuries,  and  the  whole 
history  of  which  is  potent  in  the  provisions  of  our  Constitution, 
has  done  more  to  preserve  liberty,  justice,  security,  and  freedom 
of  opportunity  for  many  people  for  a  long  period  and  over  a 
great  portion  of  the  earth,  than  any  other  system  of  govern- 
ment ever  devised  by  man.  Human  nature  does  not  change 
very  much.  The  forces  of  evil  are  hard  to  control  now  as  they 


300  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

always  have  been.  It  is  easy  to  fail  and  hard  to  succeed  in  recon- 
ciling liberty  and  order.  In  dealing  with  this  most  successful 
body  of  governmental  institutions  the  question  should  not  be 
what  sort  of  government  do  you  or  I  think  we  should  have. 
What  you  and  I  think  on  such  a  subject  is  of  very  little  value 
indeed.  The  question  should  be: 

How  can  we  adapt  our  laws  and  the  workings  of  our  govern- 
ment to  the  new  conditions  which  confront  us  without  sacrificing 
any  essential  element  of  this  system  of  government  which  has  so 
nobly  stood  the  test  of  time  and  without  abandoning  the  political 
principles  which  have  inspired  the  growth  of  its  institutions? 
For  there  are  political  principles,  and  nothing  can  be  more  fatal 
to  self-government  than  to  lose  sight  of  them  under  the  influence 
of  apparent  expediency.  .  .  . 

The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  deals  in  the  main  with 
essentials.  There  are  some  non-essential  directions  such  as  those 
relating  to  the  methods  of  election  and  of  legislation,  but  in  the 
main  it  sets  forth  the  foundations  of  government  in  clear,  simple, 
concise  terms.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  it  has  stood  the  test  of 
more  than  a  century  with  but  slight  amendment,  while  the 
modern  state  constitutions,  into  which  a  multitude  of  ordinary 
statutory  provisions  are  crowded,  have  to  be  changed  from  year 
to  year.  The  peculiar  and  essential  qualities  of  the  government 
established  by  the  Constitution  are: 

First,  it  is  representative. 

Second,  it  recognizes  the  liberty  of  the  individual  citizen  as 
distinguished  from  the  total  mass  of  citizens,  and  it  protects 
that  liberty  by  specific  limitations  upon  the  power  of  government. 

Third,  it  distributes  the  legislative,  executive,  and  judicial 
powers,  which  make  up  the  sum  total  of  all  government,  into 
three  separate  departments,  and  specifically  limits  the  powers  of 
the  officers  in  each  department. 

Fourth,  it  superimposes  upon  a  federation  of  state  govern- 
ments a  national  government  with  sovereignty  acting  directly 
not  merely  upon  the  states,  but  upon  the  citizens  of  each  state, 
within  a  line  of  limitation  drawn  between  the  powers  of  the 
national  government  and  the  powers  of  the  state  governments. 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  301 

Fifth,  it  makes  observance  of  its  limitations  requisite  to  the 
validity  of  laws,  whether  passed  by  the  nation  or  by  the  states, 
to  be  judged  by  the  courts  of  law  in  each  concrete  case  as  it  arises. 

Every  one  of  these  five  characteristics  of  the  government 
established  by  the  Constitution  was  a  distinct  advance  beyond 
the  ancient  attempts  at  popular  government,  and  the  elimina- 
tion of  any  one  of  them  would  be  a  retrograde  movement  and  a 
reversion  to  a  former  and  discarded  type  of  government.  In 
each  case  it  would  be  the  abandonment  of  a  distinctive  feature 
of  government  which  has  succeeded,  in  order  to  go  back  and  try 
again  the  methods  of  government  which  have  failed.  Of  course 
we  ought  not  to  take  such  a  backward  step  except  under  the 
pressure  of  inevitable  necessity. 


THE  LIBERATION  OF  A  PEOPLE'S  VITAL  ENERGIES1 

WOODROW  WILSON 

[For  biographical  note  regarding  author,  see  page  141.  The  volume  from 
which  this  selection  was  taken  is  a  compilation  of  the  more  significant  por- 
tions of  President's  Wilson's  campaign  speeches  delivered  previous  to  his 
election  the  first  time.  Throughout  the  speeches  there  is  a  fine  tone  of 
unselfish  public  service  and  of  a  new  spirit  of  social  justice  in  politics  and 
national  life.] 

No  matter  how  often  we  think  of  it,  the  discovery  of  America 
must  each  tune  make  a  fresh  appeal  to  our  imaginations.  For 
centuries,  indeed  from  the  beginning,  the  face  of  Europe  had 
been  turned  toward  the  east.  All  the  routes  of  trade,  every  im- 
pulse and  energy,  ran  from  west  to  east.  The  Atlantic  lay  at  the 
world's  back  door.  Then,  suddenly,  the  conquest  of  Constanti- 
nople by  the  Turk  closed  the  route  to  the  Orient.  Europe  had 
either  to  face  about  or  lack  any  outlet  for  her  energies;  the  un- 
known sea  at  the  west  at  last  was  ventured  upon,  and  the  earth 
learned  that  it  was  twice  as  big  as  it  had  thought.  Columbus 
did  not  find,  as  he  had  expected,  the  civilization  of  Cathay;  he 

iFrom  The  New  Freedom.  (Copyright,  1913,  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.)  Reprinted 
by  permission. 


302  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

found  an  empty  continent.  In  that  part  of  the  world,  upon  that 
new-found  half  of  the  globe,  mankind,  late  in  its  history,  was 
thus  afforded  an  opportunity  to  set  up  a  new  civilization;  here  it 
was  strangely  privileged  to  make  a  new  human  experiment. 

Never  can  that  moment  of  unique  opportunity  fail  to  excite 
the  emotion  of  all  who  consider  its  strangeness  and  richness;  a 
thousand  fanciful  histories  of  the  earth  might  be  contrived  with- 
out the  imagination  daring  to  conceive  such  a  romance  as  the 
hiding  away  of  half  the  globe  until  the  fulness  of  time  had  come 
for  a  new  start  in  civilization.  A  mere  sea  captain's  ambition  to 
trace  a  new  trade  route  gave  way  to  a  moral  adventure  for 
humanity.  The  race  was  to  found  a  new  order  here  on  this 
delectable  land,  which  no  man  approached  without  receiving, 
as  the  old  voyagers  relate,  you  remember,  sweet  airs  out  of 
woods  aflame  with  flowers  and  murmurous  with  the  sound  of 
pellucid  waters.  The  hemisphere  lay  waiting  to  be  touched  with 
life — life  from  the  old  centers  of  living,  surely,  but  cleansed  of 
defilement,  and  cured  of  weariness,  so  as  to  be  fit  for  the  virgin 
purity  of  a  new  bride.  The  whole  thing  springs  into  the  imagi- 
nation like  a  wonderful  vision,  an  exquisite  marvel  which  once 
only  in  all  history  could  be  vouchsafed. 

One  other  thing  only  compares  with  it;  only  one  other  thing 
touches  the  springs  of  emotion  as  does  the  picture  of  the  ships 
of  Columbus  drawing  near  the  bright  shores — and  that  is  the 
thought  of  the  choke  in  the  throat  of  the  immigrant  of  today  as 
he  gazes  from  the  steerage  deck  at  the  land  where  he  has  been 
taught  to  believe  he  in  his  turn  shall  find  an  earthly  paradise, 
where,  a  free  man,  he  shall  forget  the  heartaches  of  the  old  life, 
and  enter  into  the  fulfilment  of  the  hope  of  the  world.  For  has 
not  every  ship  that  has  pointed  her  prow  westward  borne  hither 
the  hopes  of  generation  after  generation  of  the  oppressed  of 
other  lands?  How  always  have  men's  hearts  beat  as  they  saw 
the  coast  of  America  rise  to  their  view !  How  it  has  always  seemed 
to  them  that  the  dweller  there  would  at  last  be  rid  of  kings,  of 
privileged  classes,  and  of  all  those  bonds  which  had  kept  men 
depressed  and  helpless,  and  would  there  realize  the  full  fruition 
of  his  sense  of  honest  manhood,  would  there  be  one  of  a  great 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  303 

body  of  brothers,  not  seeking  to  defraud  and  deceive  one  another, 
but  seeking  to  accomplish  the  general  good ! 

What  was  in  the  writings  of  the  men  who  founded  America — 
to  serve  the  selfish  interests  of  America?  Do  you  find  that  in 
their  writings?  No;  to  serve  the  cause  of  humanity,  to  bring 
liberty  to  mankind.  They  set  up  their  standards  here  in  America 
in  the  tenet  of  hope,  as  a  beacon  of  encouragement  to  all  the 
nations  of  the  world;  and  men  came  thronging  to  these  shores 
with  an  expectancy  that  never  existed  before,  with  a  confidence 
they  never  dared  feel  before,  and  found  here  for  generations 
together  a  haven  of  peace,  of  opportunity,  of  equality. 

God  send  that  in  the  complicated  state  of  modern  affairs  we 
may  recover  the  standards  and  repeat  the  achievements  of  that 
heroic  age ! 

For  life  is  no  longer  the  comparatively  simple  thing  it  was. 
Our  relations  one  with  another  have  been  profoundly  modified 
by  the  new  agencies  of  rapid  communication  and  transporta- 
tion, tending  swiftly  to  concentrate  life,  widen  communities, 
fuse  interests,  and  complicate  all  the  processes  of  living.  The 
individual  is  dizzily  swept  about  in  a  thousand  new  whirlpools 
of  activities.  Tyranny  has  become  more  subtle,  and  has  learned 
to  wear  the  guise  of  mere  industry,  and  even  of  benevolence. 
Freedom  has  become  a  somewhat  different  matter.  It  cannot, — 
eternal  principle  that  it  is, — it  cannot  have  altered,  yet  it  shows 
itself  in  new  aspects.  Perhaps  it  is  only  revealing  its  deeper 
meaning. 

What  is  liberty? 

I  have  long  had  an  image  in  my  mind  of  what  constitutes 
liberty.  Suppose  that  I  were  building  a  great  piece  of  powerful 
machinery,  and  suppose  that  I  should  so  awkwardly  and  unskil- 
fully assemble  the  parts  of  it  that  every  time  one  part  tried  to 
move  it  would  be  interfered  with  by  the  others,  and  the  whole 
thing  would  buckle  up  and  be  checked.  Liberty  for  the  several 
parts  would  consist  in  the  best  possible  assembling  and  adjust- 
ment of  them  all,  would  it  not?  If  you  want  the  great  piston  of 
the  engine  to  run  with  absolute  freedom,  give  it  absolutely  per- 
fect alignment  and  adjustment  with  the  other  parts  of  the 


304  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

machine,  so  that  it  is  free,  not  because  it  is  let  alone  or  isolated, 
but  because  it  has  been  associated  most  skilfully  and  carefully 
with  the  other  parts  of  the  great  structure. 

What  is  liberty?  You  say  of  the  locomotive  that  it  runs  free. 
What  do  you  mean?  You  mean  that  its  parts  are  so  assembled 
and  adjusted  that  friction  is  reduced  to  a  minimum,  and  that  it 
has  perfect  adjustment.  We  say  of  a  boat  slamming  the  water 
with  light  foot,  "How  free  she  runs,"  when  we  mean,  how  per- 
fectly she  is  adjusted  to  the  force  of  the  wind,  how  perfectly  she 
obeys  the  great  breath  out  of  the  heavens  that  fills  her  sails. 
Throw  her  head  up  into  the  wind  and  see  how  she  will  halt  and 
stagger,  how  every  sheet  will  shiver  and  her  whole  frame  be 
shaken,  how  instantly  she  is  "in  irons,"  in  the  expressive  phrase 
of  the  sea.  She  is  free  only  when  you  have  let  her  fall  off  again 
and  have  recovered  once  more  her  nice  adjustment  to  the  forces 
she  must  obey  and  cannot  defy. 

Human  freedom  consists  in  perfect  adjustments  of  human 
interests  and  human  activities  and  human  energies. 

Now,  the  adjustments  necessary  between  individuals,  be- 
tween individuals  and  the  complex  institutions  amidst  which 
they  live,  and  between  those  institutions  and  the  government, 
are  infinitely  more  intricate  today  than  ever  before.  No  doubt 
this  is  a  tiresome  and  roundabout  way  of  saying  the  thing,  yet 
perhaps  it  is  worth  while  to  get  somewhat  clearly  in  our  mind 
what  makes  all  the  trouble  today.  Life  has  become  complex; 
there  are  many  more  elements,  more  parts,  to  it  than  ever  before. 
And,  therefore,  it  is  harder  to  keep  everything  adjusted — and 
harder  to  find  out  where  the  trouble  lies  when  the  machine  gets 
out  of  order. 

You  know  that  one  of  the  interesting  things  that  Mr.  Jefferson 
said  in  those  early  days  of  simplicity  which  marked  the  begin- 
nings of  our  government  was  that  the  best  government  consisted 
in  as  little  governing  as  possible.  And  there  is  still  a  sense  in 
which  that  is  true.  It  is  still  intolerable  for  the  government  to 
interfere  with  our  individual  activities  except  where  it  is  neces- 
sary to  interfere  with  them  in  order  to  free  them.  But  I  feel 
confident  that  if  Jefferson  were  living  in  our  day  he  would  see 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  305 

what  we  see:  that  the  individual  is  caught  in  a  great  confused 
nexus  of  all  sorts  of  complicated  circumstances,  and  that  to  let 
him  alone  is  to  leave  him  helpless  as  against  the  obstacles  with 
which  he  has  to  contend;  and  that,  therefore,  law  in  our  day 
must  come  to  the  assistance  of  the  individual.  It  must  come  to 
his  assistance  to  see  that  he  gets  fair  play;  that  is  all,  but  that  is 
much.  Without  the  watchful  interference,  the  resolute  inter- 
ference, of  the  government,  there  can  be  no  fair  play  between 
individuals  and  such  powerful  institutions  as  the  trusts.  Free- 
dom today  is  something  more  than  being  let  alone.  The  pro- 
gram of  a  government  of  freedom  must  in  these  days  be  posi- 
tive, not  negative  merely. 

Well,  then,  in  this  new  sense  and  meaning  of  it,  are  we  pre- 
serving freedom  in  this  land  of  ours,  the  hope  of  all  the  earth? 

Have  we,  inheritors  of  this  continent  and  of  the  ideals  to 
which  the  fathers  consecrated  it — have  we  maintained  them, 
realizing  them,  as  each  generation  must,  anew?  Are  we,  in  the 
consciousness  that  the  life  of  man  is  pledged  to  higher  levels 
here  than  elsewhere,  striving  still  to  bear  aloft  the  standards  of 
liberty  and  hope,  or,  disillusioned  and  defeated,  are  we  feeling 
the  disgrace  of  having  had  a  free  field  in  which  to  do  new  things 
and  of  not  having  done  them? 

The  answer  must  be,  I  am  sure,  that  we  have  been  in  a  fair 
way  of  failure — tragic  failure.  And  we  stand  in  danger  of  utter 
failure  yet  except  we  fulfil  speedily  the  determination  we  have 
reached,  to  deal  with  the  new  and  subtle  tyrannies  according  to 
their  deserts.  Don't  deceive  yourselves  for  a  moment  as  to  the 
power  of  the  great  interests  which  now  dominate  our  develop- 
ment. They  are  so  great  that  it  is  almost  an  open  question 
whether  the  government  of  the  United  States  can  dominate 
them  or  not.  Go  one  step  further,  make  their  organized  power 
permanent,  and  it  may  be  too  late  to  turn  back.  The  roads 
diverge  at  the  point  where  we  stand.  They  stretch  their  vistas 
out  to  regions  where  they  are  very  far  separated  from  one  an- 
other; at  the  end  of  one  is  the  old  tiresome  scene  of  government 
tied  up  with  special  interests;  and  at  the  other  shines  the  liber- 
ating light  of  individual  initiative,  of  individual  liberty,  of  in- 
T  / 


306  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

dividual  freedom,  the  light  of  untrammeled  enterprise.  I  believe 
that  that  light  shines  out  of  the  heavens  itself  that  God  has 
created.  I  believe  in  human  liberty  as  I  believe  in  the  wine  of 
life.  There  is  no  salvation  for  men  in  the  pitiful  condescensions 
of  industrial  masters.  Guardians  have  no  place  in  a  land  of 
freemen.  Prosperity  guaranteed  by  trustees  has  no  prospect  of 
endurance.  Monopoly  means  the  atrophy  of  enterprise.  If 
monopoly  persists,  monopoly  will  always  sit  at  the  helm  of  the 
government.  I  do  not  expect  to  see  monopoly  restrain  itself. 
If  there  are  men  in  this  country  big  enough  to  own  the  govern- 
ment of  the  United  States,  they  are  going  to  own  it;  what  we 
have  to  determine  now  is  whether  we  are  big  enough,  whether 
we  are  men  enough,  whether  we  are  free  enough,  to  take  posses- 
sion again  of  the  government  which  is  our  own.  We  haven't  had 
free  access  to  it,  our  minds  have  not  touched  it  by  way  of  guid- 
ance, in  half  a  generation,  and  now  we  are  engaged  in  nothing 
less  than  the  recovery  of  what  was  made  with  our  own  hands, 
and  acts  only  by  our  delegated  authority. 

I  tell  you,  when  you  discuss  the  question  of  the  tariffs  and 
of  the  trusts,  you  are  discussing  the  very  lives  of  yourselves  and 
your  children.  I  believe  that  I  am  preaching  the  very  cause  of 
some  of  the  gentlemen  whom  I  am  opposing  when  I  preach  the 
cause  of  free  industry  in  the  United  States,  for  I  think  they  are 
slowly  girding  the  tree  that  bears  the  inestimable  fruits  of  our 
life,  and  that  if  they  are  permitted  to  gird  it  entirely  nature  will 
take  her  revenge  and  the  tree  will  die. 

I  do  not  believe  that  America  is  securely  great  because  she 
has  great  men  in  her  now.  America  is  great  in  proportion  as 
she  can  make  sure  of  having  great  men  in  the  next  generation. 
She  is  rich  in  her  unborn  children;  rich,  that  is  to  say,  if  those 
unborn  children  see  the  sun  in  a  day  of  opportunity,  see  the  sun 
when  they  are  free  to  exercise  their  energies  as  they  will.  If 
they  open  their  eyes  in  a  land  where  there  is  no  special  privilege, 
then  we  shall  come  into  a  new  era  of  American  greatness  and 
American  liberty;  but  if  they  open  their  eyes  in  a  country  where 
they  must  be  employees  or  nothing,  if  they  open  their  eyes  in  a 
land  of  merely  regulated  monopoly,  where  all  the  conditions  of 


CHANCES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  307 

industry  are  determined  by  small  groups  of  men,  then  they  will 
see  an  America  such  as  the  founders  of  this  Republic  would 
have  wept  to  think  of.  The  only  hope  is  in  the  release  of  the 
forces  which  philanthropic  trust  presidents  want  to  monopolize. 
Only  the  emancipation,  the  freeing  and  heartening  of  the  vital 
energies  of  all  the  people  will  redeem  us.  In  all  that  I  may  have 
to  do  in  public  affairs  in  the  United  States  I  am  going  to  think 
of  towns  such  as  I  have  seen  in  Indiana,  towns  of  the  old  Ameri- 
can pattern,  that  own  and  operate  their  own  industries,  hope- 
fully and  happily.  My  thought  is  going  to  be  bent  upon  the 
multiplication  of  towns  of  that  kind  and  the  prevention  of  the 
concentration  of  industry  in  this  country  in  such  a  fashion  and 
upon  such  a  scale  that  towns  that  own  themselves  will  be  im- 
possible. You  know  what  the  vitality  of  America  consists  of. 
Its  vitality  does  not  lie  in  New  York,  nor  hi  Chicago;  it  will 
not  be  sapped  by  anything  that  happens  in  St.  Louis.  The  vi- 
talicy  of  America  lies  in  the  brains,  the  energies,  the  enterprise 
of  the  people  throughout  the  land;  hi  the  efficiency  of  their  fac- 
tories and  in  the  richness  of  the  fields  that  stretch  beyond  the 
borders  of  the  town;  hi  the  wealth  which  they  extract  from 
nature  and  originate  for  themselves  through  the  inventive  genius 
characteristic  of  all  free  American  communities. 

That  is  the  wealth  of  America,  and  if  America  discourages 
the  locality,  the  community,  the  self-contained  town,  she  will 
kill  the  nation.  A  nation  is  as  rich  as  her  free  communities;  she 
is  not  as  rich  as  her  capital  city  or  her  metropolis.  The  amount 
of  money  in  Wall  Street  is  no  indication  of  the  wealth  of  the 
American  people.  That  indication  can  be  found  only  in  the  fer- 
tility of  the  American  mind  and  the  productivity  of  American 
industry  everywhere  throughout  the  United  States.  If  America 
were  not  rich  and  fertile,  there  would  be  no  money  hi  Wall 
Street.  If  Americans  were  not  vital  and  able  to  take  care  of 
themselves,  the  great  money  exchanges  would  break  down. 
The  welfare,  the  very  existence  of  the  nation,  rests  at  last  upon 
the  great  mass  of  the  people;  its  prosperity  depends  at  last  upon 
the  spirit  in  which  they  go  about  their  work  in  their  several 
communities  throughout  the  broad  land.  In  proportion  as  her 


308  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

towns  and  her  countrysides  are  happy  and  hopeful  will  America 
realize  the  high  ambitions  which  have  marked  her  in  the  eyes 
of  all  the  world. 

The  welfare,  the  happiness,  the  energy  and  spirit  of  the  men 
and  women  who  do  the  daily  work  in  our  mines  and  factories, 
on  our  railroads,  hi  our  offices  and  ports  of  trade,  on  our  farms 
and  on  the  sea,  is  the  underlying  necessity  of  all  prosperity. 
There  can  be  nothing  wholesome  unless  their  life  is  wholesome; 
there  can  be  no  contentment  unless  they  are  contented;  Their 
physical  welfare  affects  the  soundness  of  the  whole  nation.  How 
would  it  suit  the  prosperity  of  the  United  States,  how  would  it 
suit  business,  to  have  a  people  that  went  every  day  sadly  or 
sullenly  to  their  work?  How  would  the  future  look  to  you  if 
you  felt  that  the  aspiration  had  gone  out  of  most  men,  the 
confidence  of  success,  the  hope  that  they  might  improve  their 
condition?  Do  you  not  see  that  just  so  soon  as  the  old  self- 
confidence  of  America,  just  so  soon  as  her  old  boasted  advantage 
of  individual  liberty  and  opportunity,  is  taken  away,  all  the 
energy  of  her  people  begins  to  subside,  to  slacken,  to  grow  loose 
and  pulpy,  without  fiber,  and  men  simply  cast  about  to  see 
that  the  day  does  not  end  disastrously  with  them? 

So  we  must  put  heart  into  the  people  by  taking  the  heartless- 
ness  out  of  politics,  business,  and  industry.  We  have  got  to 
make  politics  a  thing  in  which  an  honest  man  can  take  his  part 
with  satisfaction  because  he  knows  that  his  opinion  will  count 
as  much  as  the  next  man's,  and  that  the  boss  and  the  interests 
have  been  dethroned.  Business  we  have  got  to  un trammel, 
abolishing  tariff  favors,  and  railroad  discrimination,  and  credit 
denials,  and  all  forms  of  unjust  handicaps  against  the  little  man. 
Industry  we  have  got  to  humanize, — not  through  the  trusts 
but  through  the  direct  action  of  law  guaranteeing  protection 
against  dangers  and  compensation  for  injuries,  guaranteeing 
sanitary  conditions,  proper  hours,  the  right  to  organize,  and  all 
the  other  things  which  the  conscience  of  the  country  demands  as 
the  workingman's  right.  We  have  got  to  cheer  and  inspirit  our 
people  with  the  sure  prospects  of  social  justice  and  due  reward, 
with  the  vision  of  the  open  gates  of  opportunity  for  all.  We 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  309 

have  got  to  set  the  energy  and  the  initiative  of  this  great  people 
absolutely  free,  so  that  the  future  of  America  will  be  greater 
than  the  past,  so  that  the  pride  of  America  will  grow  with  achieve- 
ment, so  that  America  will  know  as  she  advances  from  generation 
to  generation  that  each  brood  of  her  sons  is  greater  and  more  en- 
lightened than  that  which  preceded  it,  know  that  she  is  fulfilling 
the  promise  that  she  has  made  to  mankind. 

Such  is  the  vision  of  some  of  us  who  now  come  to  assist  in 
its  realization.  For  we  Democrats  would  not  have  endured  this 
long  burden  of  exile  if  we  had  not  seen  a  vision.  We  could  have 
traded;  we  could  have  got  into  the  game;  we  could  have  sur- 
rendered and  made  terms;  we  could  have  played  the  role  of 
patrons  to  the  men  who  wanted  to  dominate  the  interests  of  the 
country — and  here  and  there  gentlemen  who  pretended  to  be  of 
us  did  make  those  arrangements.  They  couldn't  stand  privation. 
You  never  can  stand  it  unless  you  have  within  you  some  im- 
perishable food  upon  which  to  sustain  life  and  courage,  the  food 
of  those  visions  of  the  spirit  where  a  table  is  set  before  us  laden 
with  palatable  fruits,  the  fruits  of  hope,  the  fruits  of  imagination, 
those  invisible  things  of  the  spirit  which  are  the  only  things  upon 
which  we  can  sustain  ourselves  through  this  weary  world  with- 
out fainting.  We  have  carried  in  our  minds,  after  you  had 
thought  you  had  obscured  and  blurred  them,  the  ideals  of  those 
men  who  first  set  their  foot  upon  America,  those  little  bands 
who  came  to  make  a  foothold  hi  the  wilderness,  because  the 
great  teeming  nations  that  they  had  left  behind  them  had  for- 
gotten what  human  liberty  was,  liberty  of  thought,  liberty  of 
religion,  liberty  of  residence,  liberty  of  action. 

Since  then-  day  the  meaning  of  liberty  has  deepened.  But  it 
has  not  ceased  to  be  a  fundamental  demand  of  the  human  spirit, 
a  fundamental  necessity  for  the  life  of  the  soul.  And  the  day  is 
at  hand  when  it  shall  be  realized  on  this  consecrated  soil — a 
New  Freedom — a  Liberty  widened  and  deepened  to  match  the 
broadened  life  of  man  in  modern  America,  restoring  to  him  in 
very  truth  the  control  of  his  government,  throwing  wide  all 
gates  of  lawful  enterprise,  unfettering  his  energies,  and  warming 
the  generous  impulses  of  his  heart — a  process  of  release,  emanci- 


310  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

pation,  and  inspiration,  full  of  a  breath  of  life  as  sweet  and 
wholesome  as  tie  airs  that  filled  the  sails  of  the  caravels  of 
Columbus  and  gave  the  promise  and  boast  of  magnificent 
Opportunity  in  which  America  dare  not  fail. 


A  PLEA  FOR  THE  AMERICAN  TRADITION1 

WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

[Winston  Churchill  (1871 )  was  born  in  St.  Louis,  Missouri.   He 

was  graduated  from  the  United  States  Naval  Academy  in  1894,  but  resigned 
from  the  Navy  in  order  to  devote  himself  to  writing.  He  has  produced  some 
ten  novels  of  distinction,  several  of  them  dealing  with  problems  of  American 
life  and  politics.  He  has  himself  taken  an  active  part  in  politics  hi  New 
Hampshire,  the  state  in  which  he  is  now  living.] 

It  has  been  the  complacent  custom  of  the  average  man  to 
despise  systems  of  philosophy,  to  think  of  them  as  harmless 
speculations  made  for  arm-chairs  and  leisure.  Every  once  in  a 
while  the  world  undergoes  a  rude  awakening  from  this  fallacy, 
as  when  it  is  shaken  by  a  French  Revolution.  The  unrest  of  the 
masses  in  the  eighteenth  century,  becoming  conscious  in  the 
philosophy  of  the  rights  of  man,  lighted  a  conflagration  that  took 
a  quarter  of  a  century  to  quench  and  left  a  transformed  world 
behind  it.  And  recently  we  have  had  once  more  a  terrifying 
proof  that  philosophies,  that  cultures,  may  be  dynamic. 

Those  who  had  seen  and  studied  the  German  Empire  before 
the  war  beheld  the  spectacle  of  a  nation  which,  though  not 
without  internal  dissensions  and  party  strife,  had  achieved  a 
remarkable  degree  of  efficiency  and  individual  contentment; 
a  nation  in  which  waste  had  been  largely  eliminated,  hi  which 
poverty  was  less  prevalent  than  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  democracies. 
Prosperity  was  more  widely  diffused.  The  industrial  problem, 
hanging  menacingly  over  England  and  America  like  an  evil 
genie  above  the  smoke,  in  Germany  was  apparently  far  on  its 
way  toward  solution.  The  transformation  from  a  loosely  knit, 

'From  Harper's  Monthly  Magazine,  vol.  cxxxii,  p.  299  (January,  1916).  Reprinted 
by  permission. 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  311 

over-populated  group  of  states  in  which  there  was  much  misery 
and  poverty  into  a  rich,  self-confident,  and  aggressive  empire 
had  taken  place  within  a  comparatively  few  years. 

It  was  not  until  the  war  broke  out  that  we  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  democracies  began  to  inquire  why  and  how,  only  to  find 
to  our  amazement  that  this  growth  was  due  to  a  principle  at  work 
among  the  German  people,  a  philosophy,  a  Kultur,  a  leaven  with 
which  they  had  become  saturated.  It  is  not  necessary  here  to 
enter  into  an  analysis  of  this  Kultur,  or  to  attempt  to  pass  judg- 
ment upon  it;  apparently  it  is  a  development  from  an  odd  com- 
bination of  the  systems  of  many  thinkers;  it  has  been  shaped  by 
the  needs  and  environment  of  a  people  and  is  in  harmony  with 
the  temperament  of  that  people.  Nor  is  it  needful  to  inquire  to 
what  extent  this  national  philosophy  or  culture  was  intellec- 
tually conscious.  In  the  early  days  of  our  republic  the  American 
was  imbued  with  a  racial  tradition  whose  origin  goes  back  to  the 
Magna  Charta;  a  tradition  laying  emphasis  on  individual  initi- 
ative and  individual  freedom.  It  was  in  our  blood,  and  it  made 
the  British  Colonies  and  the  United  States  of  America.  The 
average  Scotch-Irish  settler,  the  western  farmer,  did  not  know 
any  more  of  Locke  or  Adam  Smith  than  the  German  peasant  of 
today  knows  of  Fichte  and  Hegel,  Nietzsche,  von  Treitschke, 
or  Bernhardi.  But  this  American  tradition,  because  of  the 
change  from  a  simple  agricultural  and  a  complex  industrial 
society,  has  gradually  become  obscured. 

It  is  difference  in  ideas,  in  views  of  life,  that  arouses  suspicions 
and  antagonisms,  that  leads  to  conflict  between  individuals  as 
well  as  nations.  The  emotions,  the  longings,  and  aspirations  of 
a  people  are  expressed  by  their  thinkers  in  ideas,  and  ideas  lead 
to  action.  Whatever  may  be  the  merits  or  demerits  of  the  German 
culture,  the  revelation  of  its  existence  and  nature  has  sharply 
aroused  thinking  Americans  to  the  realization  that  it  is  not  for  us. 
Both  our  traditions  and  temperament  are  opposed  to  it.  We  are 
beginning  to  grasp  the  fact  that  democracy  is  at  stake — what- 
ever democracy  has  come  to  mean. 

The  opening  of  the  present  war  found  the  Anglo-Saxon 
democracies  in  a  state  of  muddle  and  chaos.  Our  houses  were 


312  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

not  in  order.  And  that  we  might  have  to  defend  our  institutions, 
such  as  they  were,  never  seems  to  have  occurred  to  us.  We  had 
evolved  no  system  of  defense  in  harmony  with  the  nature  of  our 
government,  with  our  traditions — we  had  no  system  of  defense 
worthy  of  the  name.  And  England,  save  for  her  navy,  was  in 
the  same  plight.  Prosperity  had  made  many  of  us  smug  and 
selfish,  ready  to  reap  profits  out  of  other  people's  misfortunes; 
we  had  mistaken  the  pursuit  of  wealth  for  the  pursuit  of  happi- 
ness; we  were  wasteful,  and  riddled  with  political  corruption. 
The  rise  of  modern  industry  with  its  introduction  of  the  machine 
had  changed  the  face  of  our  civilization,  largely  swept  away  the 
democracy  we  had,  created  a  class  of  economic  dependents; 
established,  indeed,  an  economic  slavery — a  slavery  no  less  real 
than  that  in  which  the  master  was  individualized.  And  that 
equality  of  opportunity,  so  prevalent  when  land  and  resources 
were  plentiful,  had  dwindled  amazingly.  Serious  writers  agree 
that  it  is  growing  increasingly  difficult  for  men  to  rise  from  the 
ranks  of  the  workers,  partly  because  of  increasing  class  solidarity, 
partly  because  of  the  great  denial  necessary  to  acquire  sufficient 
funds — a  denial  that  reacts  on  the  family.  Those  who  do  rise 
become  recruits  of  a  hostile  camp — the  camp  of  the  employer; 
and  those  who  do  rise  seem  to  be  possessed  more  markedly  than 
ever  of  those  characteristics — so  hostile  to  democratic  ideals — 
hinted  at  by  the  author  of  the  "Spoon  River  Anthology:" 

"Beware  of  the  man  who  rises  to  power 
From  one  suspender." 

We  are  in  the  throes  of  industrial  strife,  class  strife,  the  very 
condition  our  forefathers  who  founded  this  nation  hoped  to 
obviate.  We  have  a  large  element  of  our  population  burning  with 
a  sense  of  injustice  and  dependence — feelings  that  partially  die 
down  only  to  flare  up  again;  an  element  for  the  most  part  un- 
educated in  any  real  sense  of  the  word;  an  element  imbued  with 
crude  and  non-American  ideas  as  to  how  this  injustice  is  to  be 
righted.  Their  solution  is  one  of  class  solidarity  and  revolution, 
and  they  cannot  be  blamed  for  advocating  it.  We  must  make 
up  our  minds  that  we  shall  not  have  peace  or  order  until  equality 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  313 

of  opportunity  tends  to  become  restored  and  dependence  elimi- 
nated. 

We  shall  have  to  find  and  put  in  practice,  if  democracy  is  to 
endure,  a  democratic  solution  of  the  industrial  problem. 

It  is  curious,  but  true,  that  it  does  not  seem  to  have  occurred 
to  us  to  examine  the  traditions  of  our  race  to  see  whether  these 
might  not  be  developed  and  made  as  applicable  to  the  problem 
of  industrial  democracy  as  they  had  been  to  that  of  political 
democracy.  Our  statesmen,  in  their  despair,  attempted  to  solve 
the  problem  by  a  tendency  to  adopt  a  collectivism  borrowed  from 
Central  Europe.  Indeed,  many  of  the  measures  passed  in  Eng- 
land and  America  during  the  past  dozen  years  are  in  principle 
alien  to  the  American  tradition  and  temperament.  Pensions, 
for  instance,  are  not  compatible  with  Anglo-Saxon  independence 
and  respect;  nor  do  we  take  kindly  to  laws,  however  benevo- 
lent, that  hamper  the  freedom  and  development  of  the  individual. 
Coercion  is  repugnant  to  us. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  United  States  of  America  is  no 
longer  Anglo-Saxon.  But  I  believe  that  I  am  in  accord  with 
experience  and  modern  opinion  when  I  say  that  environment  is 
stronger  than  heredity,  and  that  our  immigrants  become  imbued 
with  our  racial  individualism — at  present  largely  instructive  and 
materialistic  hi  quality.  Whether  our  immigration  problem  is 
at  present  being  handled  with  wisdom  and  efficiency  is  quite 
another  matter. 

Professor  Dewey  quotes  a  sentence  from  Heine  declaring  that 
nations  have  an  instinctive  presentiment  of  what  is  required  to 
fulfil  their  missions,  and  it  is  quite  true  that  we  in  America  have 
such  a  presentiment,  although  we  have  not  translated  it  into  a 
conscious  creed  or  culture;  with  us  it  is  little  more  than  a  pre- 
sentiment, but  the  war  has  served  to  make  us  realize,  that,  if 
our  democracy  is  to  be  preserved,  its  survival  must  be  justified, 
it  must  be  efficient.  The  first  essential  to  such  efficiency  is  that 
our  philosophy,  our  spirit  and  ideals,  should  be  defined,  and 
secondly  that  our  citizens  from  the  early  years  of  childhood 
should  be  saturated  and  animated  with  these  principles  and 
ideals.  In  short,  we  must  have  a  culture  of  American  democracy, 


314  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

and  that  culture  must  be  in  harmony  with  the  character  and 
temperament  and  traditions  of  the  nation. 

For  this  reason  it  becomes  essential  to  examine  our  character 
and  traditions,  for  nations  as  well  as  men  must  first  arrive  at  a 
thorough  comprehension  of  their  characters  before  a  scheme  of 
life  can  be  made  to  fit  them.  The  "presentiment  of  destiny"  lies 
hidden  in  character.  The  leopard  cannot  change  his  spots: 
men  and  nations  cannot  change  their  inherent  characteristics, 
but  they  can  develop  and  transform  these,  direct  them  from 
material  toward  spiritual  ends. 

Only  a  little  reflection  is  required  to  convince  any  one  that 
the  Anglo-Saxon,  and  particularly  the  American,  is  an  individual- 
ist. It  is  said  with  much  truth  that  we  are  lawless  by  nature, 
and  we  have,  indeed,  very  little  respect  for  laws.  We  are  jealous 
of  control;  we  are  not  and  never  have  been  a  submissive  people, 
and  we  could  not  live  under  a  benevolent  government  that  would 
teach  us  what  is  good  for  us.  Our  forefathers  came  over  here  to 
live  unto  themselves,  to  exercise  their  own  opinions  and  work 
out  their  own  destinies.  However  unattractive  such  individual- 
ism may  appear,  we  have  to  make  the  best  of  it,  to  make  virtue 
out  of  necessity.  All  good  people — contrary  to  Sunday-school 
traditions — are  not  alike.  And  if  we  are  going  to  become  good, 
we  must  become  good  in  our  own  way. 

When  certain  American  colonists,  impatient  with  British 
interference,  rebelled  against  England,  they  wrote  down  in 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  a  creed,  a  philosophy,  that  was 
quite  in  keeping  with  Anglo-Saxon  temperament,  with  Anglo- 
Saxon  ideals  as  far  back  as  the  Magna  Charta.  Every  man  is 
entitled  to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  A  govern- 
ment was  necessary,  but  they  were  determined  to  have  as  little 
government  as  possible,  to  give  the  individual  the  greatest 
amount  of  liberty  consistent  with  any  government  at  all;  they 
laid  stress  on  individual  initiative  and  development,  on  self- 
realization. 

Our  forefathers  were  neither  saints  nor  dreamers.  They  also 
were  not  averse  to  the  accumulation  of  wealth,  and  undoubt- 
edly they  had  an  eye  to  the  main  chance.  But  there  is  one  truth 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  3*5 

that  cannot  be  too  emphatically  affirmed,  that  in  human  affairs 
the  material  and  the  spiritual  are  inextricably  mixed  together, 
though  one  or  the  other  may  be  preponderant. 

In  spite  of — perhaps  because  of — the  fact  that  the  American 
creed  was  a  magnificent  declaration  of  faith  in  man,  it  was 
received  with  derision  and  laughter  in  Europe,  regarded  as 
Utopian.  Yet  we  are  pledged  to  it,  both  by  our  temperament 
and  traditions.  We  cannot  do  otherwise.  We  shall  have  to  work 
out  our  destiny  along  these  lines. 

But  instead  of  spiritualizing  this  creed  we  have  steadily 
materialized  it,  we  have  mistaken  the  pursuit  of  happiness  for 
the  pursuit  of  wealth;  we  have  failed  to  grasp  the  truth  that 
happiness  lies — and  lies  alone — in  self-realization;  that  the  ac- 
quisition of  wealth,  that  the  triumph  of  man  over  nature,  is 
merely  accessory  to  happiness. 

The  creed  is  deeply  religious  in  its  sublime  trust  in  man,  its 
confidence  that  he  will  not  pursue  false  gods  forever,  that  he  will 
come  at  length  to  a  realization  of  the  futility  of  the  purely 
material,  and  that  he  will  turn  at  last  voluntarily  and  make  his 
contribution  to  the  whole.  I  should  like  to  emphasize  that 
word  voluntarily,  because  it  is  the  most  significant  in  democracy. 
We  are  a  nation  of  volunteers;  we  do  not  wish  to  be  forced  into 
serving  our  government,  but  to  do  so  of  our  own  free  will. 
This  does  not  mean  that  voluntary  service  is  unorganized  service. 

Our  creed  infers  also  that  before  we  can  have  efficiency  in 
government  we  must  have  self-control  in  individuals.  It  differs 
from  the  German  culture  in  that  it  implies  development  and 
ultimate  unity  through  differentiation,  and  a  belief  that  that 
nation  is  the  richest  nation  which  contains  the  most  highly 
developed  and  richest  individuals.  National  wealth,  both  mater- 
ial and  spiritual,  grows  out  of  the  self-realization  of  citizens  and 
their  voluntary  contributions  to  the  nation. 

American  democracy,  then,  as  I  have  said,  confesses  its 
trust  in  mankind,  and  if  we  open  our  eyes  we  may  see  about  us 
no  lack  of  experiments  throughout  the  republic  in  which  this 
trust  in  humanity  is  being  more  or  less  justified.  Many  of  our 
universities  and  some  of  our  public  schools  have  adopted  a 


316  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

qualified  system  of  self-government,  and  our  faith  is  such  that 
we  are  even  applying  it,  and  not  without  encouragement,  to  the 
prison  system.  Trust  is  the  despair  of  politicians. 

Democracy  must,  from  its  very  nature,  evolve  its  own  truths 
from  experience  and  traditions,  and  can  accept  no  external 
authority.  It  is  an  adventure.  It  is  never  safe — otherwise  the 
element  of  faith  would  be  eliminated  from  it.  It  grows  as  the  soul 
grows,  through  mistakes  and  suffering.  Nevertheless,  there  is 
in  it  some  guiding  principle  of  progress  that  is  constant,  and  with 
which  its  citizens  should  be  imbued  and  inspired.  I  am  speaking 
of  an  American  culture,  using  it  in  the  German  sense  of  Kultur. 
To  quote  Professor  Dewey  again:  Culture,  according  to  Kant, 
differs  from  civilization  in  this,  that  civilization  is  a  natural  and 
largely  unconscious  or  involuntary  growth,  the  by-product  of 
the  needs  engendered  when  people  live  close  together,  while 
culture  is  deliberate  and  conscious,  the  fruit  not  of  men's  natural 
motives,  but  of  natural  motives  transformed  by  the  inner  spirit. 
Observe  the  word  transformed. 

The  spirit  of  democracy,  the  philosophy  of  democracy,  needs 
to  be  developed  and  made  conscious  in  order  that  we  may  grad- 
ually transform  our  material  individualism  into  a  spiritual 
individualism.  Thus  the  pursuit  of  happiness  becomes  the 
struggle  for  self-realization;  thus  the  riches  and  the  gifts  devel- 
oped are  devoted,  voluntarily,  to  the  good  of  the  whole.  There 
is  no  coercion,  but  a  spirit.  Competition  becomes  emulation, 
such  as  we  see  now  among  scientists,  or  in  that  finer  element  of 
the  medical  profession  that  bends  all  its  energies  for  the  benefit 
of  humanity.  Trust  is  the  order  of  the  day.  Individual  initiative 
is  stimulated  rather  than  paralyzed,  and  the  citizen  contributes 
to  government  rather  than  attempts  to  compel  government  to 
contribute  to  him. 

All  this  does  not  make  organization  any  the  less  necessary. 
It  does  not  mean  that  the  volunteer  must  not  be  trained.  Quite 
the  contrary.  But  it  does  mean  that  the  volunteer  must  grow  up 
conscious  of  the  traditions  of  his  country,  instilled  with  the 
spirit  of  its  institutions. 

As  has  been  said,  it  would  seem  of  late  years  that  there  has 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  317 

been  a  tendency  to  lose  faith  in  the  virtue  of  the  principles  of 
American  democracy  to  right  wrongs,  to  cure  the  evils  that 
modern  industrialism  has  brought  in  its  tram.  A  marked  senti- 
ment has  arisen,  demanding  that  government  be  given  strong 
coercive  powers  to  be  exercised  on  behalf  of  and  for  the  protec- 
tion of  the  economically  dependent.  Such  legislation  is  class 
legislation — it  either  takes  for  granted  that  an  economically 
dependent  class  is  inevitable,  or  else  that  the  members  of  the 
dependent  order  will  gradually  be  emancipated,  not  as  individ- 
uals, but  as  a  class.  From  the  point  of  view  of  our  traditions  it  is 
quite  as  subversive  as  legislation  in  favor  of  the  economically 
powerful.  Vicious  as  this  undoubtedly  is,  it  has  been  to  a  large 
extent  extra-legal  and  therefore  within  the  bounds  of  cure. 

That  an  ounce  of  prevention  is  worth  a  pound  of  cure  may  be 
taken  as  a  cardinal  motto  of  our  democracy.  We  are,  of  course, 
face  to  face  at  present  with  a  condition  and  not  a  theory,  and  we 
have  today  the  anomalous  situation  of  a  political  quasi-democ- 
racy  upon  which  an  economic  oligarchy  has  been  superimposed 
— we  have  an  economically  dependent  class  that  has  only  the 
choice  between  masters,  as  Herbert  Croly  in  his  Progressive 
Democracy  points  out;  a  class  whose  members  as  individuals 
have  no  command  over  the  conditions  in  which  they  shall  work; 
and  the  fact  that  these  conditions  are  often  dictated  by  labor 
unions  does  not  emancipate  the  individual.  In  such  a  case  we 
are  as  far  from  American  democracy  as  ever.  Old-age  pensions, 
minimum-wage  laws,  workingmen's  compensation  acts,  may,  in 
the  muddle  we  have  got  into,  be  necessary  to  secure  a  temporary 
measure  of  justice,  but  fundamentally  they  are  not  American. 
Conscription  was  necessary  in  our  Civil  War,  but  conscription 
is  not  in  harmony  with  Anglo-Saxon  democracy.  The  laws  I 
have  mentioned  are  poultices  and  not  cures,  inasmuch  as  they 
do  not  go  to  the  root  of  the  evil.  These  laws  confess  no  ultimate 
trust  in  human  nature;  they  assume  that  a  situation  will  always 
exist  wherein  the  powerful  will  take  advantage  over  the  weak 
unless  a  strong  government  steps  in  to  restrain  them. 

Democracy  is  contributive;  it  does  not  receive  favors  from 
its  government,  but  confers  them.  And  the  tendency  to  throw 


the  onus  of  support  on  government  is  not  to  create  a  self-reliant 
people,  nor  a  self-respecting,  resourceful,  and  inventive  people. 
Labor  tends  to  become  routine;  there  is  no  pride  in  it.  Unless 
labor  is  emancipated  from  its  condition  of  dependence,  unless 
we  restore  dignity  and  pride  in  work,  and  begin  to  reestablish 
that  comparative  equality  of  opportunity  that  once  existed 
when  this  country  had  wide,  empty  lands  and  unclaimed  re- 
sources, our  republic  will  go  on  the  rocks.  Of  this  we  may  be 
sure.  It  cannot  continue  to  exist  half  slave  and  half  free.  Unless 
our  citizens  without  distinction  of  class  are  awakened  to  the 
danger  and  instilled  with  the  spirit  of  our  traditions,  we  shall 
have  a  class  revolution,  and  that  means  collectivism  with  all 
its  leveling  influences.  Collectivism  does  not  tend  to  produce 
the  rich  individual,  because  initiative  is  destroyed.  Class 
solidarity  in  a  class  struggle  against  injustice  has  indeed  its 
ennobling  influence,  but  it  is  a  very  different  thing  from  what 
Americans  understand  as  patriotism.  Moreover,  the  character- 
istics of  this  class  struggle  in  its  earlier  stages  is  that  of  the  barter 
of  one  kind  of  property  for  another — and  so  long  as  labor  is 
regarded  as  property  it  can  never  have  any  true  dignity  or  dis- 
tinction. The  struggle,  in  spite  of  the  heights  in  sacrifice  often 
attained  to  by  working  men  and  women  on  strike,  in  spite  of 
their  physical  and  moral  sufferings,  is  founded  fundamentally  on 
material  issues.  The  great  mass  of  working  people  are  at  present 
uneducated  in  any  true  sense,  and  therefore  their  ambitions, 
once  gained,  are  apt  to  be  satisfied  with  purely  material  comforts. 
A  proof  of  this  may  be  found  in  the  fact  that  in  times  of  pros- 
perity, when  work  is  plentiful  and  wages  high,  the  labor  agitator 
generally  preaches  to  deaf  ears  unless  the  employees  can  be  con- 
vinced that  the  employer  is  taking  too  large  a  share  of  the  profits. 

What,  then,  is  the  American  solution?  It  depends  absolutely 
upon  the  elimination  of  the  class  spirit  from  our  body  politic. 

Let  us  examine  once  more  the  theory  of  our  state.  We  find 
in  it  certain  fundamental  principles  in  harmony  with  our 
national  and  racial  character,  and  our  general  conclusion  is, 
therefore,  that  we  shall  achieve  no  progress  by  breaking  with 
traditions,  but  on  the  other  hand  these  traditions  must  be 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  319 

developed  to  cope  with  new  conditions  that  arise  and  confront  us, 
conditions  for  which  no  man  or  set  of  men  are  to  blame.  One  of 
these  new  conditions  is  this,  that  instead  of  a  sparsely  settled 
land  fabulously  rich  in  resources,  with  plenty  of  room  for  all 
who  might  come,  we  have  today  a  population  of  a  hundred  million 
and  the  resources  largely  taken  up  and  exploited.  The  day  of  the 
pioneer  is  past;  the  day  of  the  administrator  is  at  hand;  hus- 
bandry and  efficiency  must  take  the  place  of  waste.  In  former 
times,  when  lands  and  resources  were  plentiful,  a  large  equality 
of  opportunity  existed,  and  equality  of  opportunity  is  the  very 
foundation  stone  of  American  individualism.  Indeed,  it  may  be 
said  that  the  state  did  guarantee  this  equality  hi  not  seizing  the 
lands  and  resources  for  herself,  but  in  throwing  them  open  to 
her  citizens. 

A  logical  development,  therefore,  of  the  American  doctrine, 
if  indeed  it  be  a  development  rather  than  application  to  new 
conditions,  is  that  the  state  should  guarantee  equality  of  oppor- 
tunity in  a  modern  industrial  commonwealth.  And  this  guarantee 
of  a  fair  start  may  be  said  to  be  the  one  positive  function  hi  the 
theory  of  the  American  state.  All  other  adjustments,  the  right- 
ing of  injustices  and  wrongs,  must  be  left  to  the  workings  of  the 
American  democratic  spirit  in  the  citizens  themselves,  must 
depend  upon  the  extent  to  which  the  body  politic  is  saturated 
with  this  spirit.  It  is  in  truth  what  may  be  called  a  big  order. 
But  there  is  no  other  way  out  for  us. 

It  is  a  fact  of  profound  significance  that  American  demo- 
cracy from  its  very  beginning  instinctively  laid  stress  on  uni- 
versal education,  and  foreign  travelers  who  came  a  hundred 
years  ago  to  study  our  curious  institutions  were  struck  by 
the  extent  to  which  cultivation  had  permeated  our  citizenship. 
A  self-governing  people  must  be  intelligent.  And — be  it  noted — 
what  was  largely  meant  by  education  was  the  adequate  prepara- 
tion of  the  young  for  intelligent  participation  in  the  life  and 
affairs  of  the  nation  as  it  then  existed. 

An  almost  incredible  change  has  taken  place  since  then. 
Our  simple  republic  has  become  a  complex  commonwealth.  And 
we  must  bear  in  mind  that  the  final  justification  for  the  existence 


320  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

of  this  commonwealth  must  be  that  of  creating  material  wealth 
for  spiritual  ends.  An  industrial  commonwealth  does  not  imply 
mere  utilitarianism;  the  analogy  of  the  bee  and  the  hive  does  not 
hold.  Life  is  not  without  its  graces;  existence  is  a  rounded  thing. 
Literature  and  art  are  not  alone  for  the  privileged,  but  are  made 
more  and  more  democratic,  are  part  and  parcel  of  the  education 
of  all,  while  religion  is  inherent  in  government  itself,  in  harmony 
with  it — the  contributive  spirit  of  the  whole. 

A  new  system  of  education  based  on  psychology,  on  scientific 
principles,  an  education  for  life  in  a  modern  industrial  democracy, 
is  being  put  into  practice  in  various  parts  of  the  United  States, 
and  is  destined  ultimately  to  supplant  the  old  system.  Educa- 
tion in  its  very  nature  is  selective,  but  what  may  be  called  the 
new  education  is  not  that  which  we  know  as  vocational,  which  is 
class  education.  It  does  not  undertake  to  educate  the  workman 
for  a  workman.  It  is  based  on  the  American  theory  that  every 
citizen,  whatever  his  future  calling  may  be,  must  be  made  familiar 
with  the  development  of  industry,  with  the  development  of 
government,  of  art  and  literature  and  religion,  from  the  earliest 
times  up  to  the  present.  This  is  not  so  difficult  as  it  seems.  It 
is  an  education  in  the  principles  of  growth,  in  the  social  develop- 
ment of  humanity.  It  is  analogous  to  the  physical  and  individual 
development  of  humanity  from  the  egg.  It  is  an  education  in 
truth,  in  science,  and  in  straight  thinking. 

Industrially  the  modern  steel-mill  is  an  evolution  from  the 
village  blacksmith's  shop  and  foundry,  just  as  a  modern  textile- 
mill  is  an  evolution  from  the  home  spinning-wheel  and  loom  on 
the  farm.  These  industries  have  been  taken  out  of  the  home, 
the  blacksmith-shop  and  the  foundry  are  no  longer  familiar 
village  spectacles.  What  was  a  part  of  the  education  of  the 
individual  outside  of  the  school  has  now,  perforce,  become  a 
part  of  the  general  educational  task. 

The  new  education  is  based  on  the  sound  principle  of  the 
direct  application  of  thought  to  action,  of  passing  from  the 
concrete  to  the  abstract  rather  than  from  the  abstract  to  the 
concrete.  The  uses  of  knowledge  are  held  up  as  incentives  to  its 
acquirement.  The  child  learns  to  read  because  he  loves  stories; 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  321 

he  learns  arithmetic  and  weights  and  measures  because  he  wishes 
to  build  a  house;  while  the  practice  of  a  measure  of  self-govern- 
ment in  school  leads  to  a  grasp  of  its  value  in  democracy. 

Presently  the  future  citizen  discovers  what  he  can  do  best, 
to  select  the  particular  service  in  life  for  which  nature  has 
fitted  him.  It  may  not  be  an  important  service,  he  may 
not  be  equipped  by  nature  for  a  leader.  But  he  has  had  his 
opportunity.  The  state  has  given  it  to  him.  The  opportunity 
does  not  necessarily  cease  when  his  early  education  has  been 
finished,  since  some  individuals  develop  late.  But  under  such  a 
system  no  citizen  is  able  to  say  that  he  has  not  had  a  chance 
to  develop  what  is  in  him,  and  thus  the  element  of  discontent  is 
removed  at  its  source.  He  is,  so  far  as  the  state  can  make  him 
such,  a  rounded  individual;  he  has  learned  to  use  his  hands  and 
his  head,  and  to  appreciate  the  finer  things  in  life. 

It  is  quite  true  that  men  will  not  work  except  for  a  prize; 
the  personal  possession  of  property  is  essential,  but  if  the  prize 
has  not  a  spiritual  aspect  it  is  dross.  In  so  far  as  work  itself  is 
the  prize,  in  so  far  as  the  achieved  gift  is  a  contribution,  and  a 
voluntary  contribution,  to  humanity  it  is  worthy  of  individual 
effort. 

Education  founded  on  these  principles  instills  patriotism  in- 
stead of  class  feeling,  and  strikes  at  the  very  root  of  the  tendency 
toward  class  solidarity  and  class  strife.  And  it  implies,  further- 
more, a  truer  conception  of  democracy  than  that  held  in  Jack- 
son's day — a  democracy  of  leadership  combined  with  responsi- 
bility. The  choice  inolividuals  are  developed  with  the  least 
possible  resentment. 

Guaranteed  education  is  therefore  a  fundamental  principle 
in  American  democracy,  but  before  leaving  the  subject,  it  is  well, 
in  addition  to  dwelling  upon  the  significance  of  experiments  such 
as  the  Gary  schools,  to  call  attention  to  another  experiment,  that 
of  education  in  detail,  which  is  being  tried  along  traditional 
American  lines  at  Schenectady  and  Cincinnati  and  other  places 
in  this  country.  Here,  at  Union  College  and  the  University  of 
Cincinnati,  education  is  directly  connected  with  industry,  the 
theoretical  knowledge  acquired  in  the  college  or  university 


322  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

immediately  applied  by  the  students  in  the  great  manufacturing 
establishments  whose  properties  lie  adjacent.  Thus  students  who 
prove  their  ability  are  actually  in  the  industry  and  in  line  for 
rapid  advancement.  They  are  familiar  with  its  theory  as  well 
as  with  its  processes. 

Lastly,  students  learn  in  the  schools  and  universities  to  value 
the  principles  of  American  democracy  to  such  an  extent  that  they 
are  willing  to  defend  them,  to  fight  if  necessary  for  the  right  of 
self-development  that  is  the  American  heritage.  Even  as  the 
industrial  army  of  the  future  must  be  recruited  from  educated 
citizens  rather  than  from  raw  and  ignorant  masses,  so  must  the 
military  forces  of  the  republic.  It  is  a  question  whether  militarism 
ever  was  or  ever  will  be  an  American  trait;  but  those  who  fear  it, 
who  are  apprehensive  that  a  large  army  will  create  a  dangerous, 
high-handed  ruling  caste,  need  have  no  dread  of  such  a  caste  if 
our  army  is  organized  in  harmony  with  democratic  principles. 

The  American  democratic  state,  then,  has  but  the  one  positive 
function,  that  of  guaranteeing  to  each  of  its  citizens  a  fair  start 
— since  the  protection  of  rights  is  merely  negative.  The  emphasis 
is  laid  on  the  spirit,  the  trust  is  put  in  the  spirit,  not  in  the  law. 
Enlightened  self-interest  is  the  old  and  much-ridiculed  phrase;  an 
illuminating  phrase,  nevertheless;  individual  initiative  and  the 
satisfaction  of  individual  achievement  remain;  the  self-interest 
remains  also,  but  transformed  by  enlightenment  and  made  con- 
tributory to  the  interests  of  the  whole.  Here  is  precisely  the 
paradox  of  Christianity:  "He  that  findeth  his  life  shall  lose  it, 
and  he  that  loseth  his  life  for  My  sake  shall  find  it." 

It  is  no  wonder,  indeed,  that  such  a  political  creed  as  our  fore- 
fathers composed  seemed  to  Europe  impractical  and  Utopian. 
Thus  analyzed,  it  must  seem  to  many  Utopian  today.  That  our 
Anglo-Saxon  theory  of  democracy  is  no  short  cut  to  the  millen- 
nium is  quite  evident,  and  if  democracy  is  to  have  any  approach 
to  perfection,  that  comparative  perfection  must  be  one  of  growth, 
not  of  achievement.  A  satisfaction  in  development  rather  than 
in  achievement  seems  to  be  the  principle  of  life. 

Congress  and  state  legislatures  may  pass  coercive  laws  in 
the  hope  of  securing  a  crude  justice,  but  it  has  been  well  said  that 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  323 

there  never  was  a  law  that  a  coach  and  four  couldn't  be  driven 
through.  We  Americans  are  skilful  coach-drivers,  and  coach- 
driving  through  laws  as  obstacles  has  been  the  pastime  and 
delight  of  many  corporation  lawyers.  Public  opinion  must  pre- 
cede laws  and  not  follow  them.  The  truth  may  as  well  be  faced 
that  our  salvation  depends  absolutely  on  what  is  called  public 
opinion,  and  public  opinion  is  only  another  name  for  the  demo- 
cratic spirit  or  culture  with  which  our  electorate  must  be  satu- 
rated. 

For  those  who  have  eyes  to  see,  however,  there  are  signs  in 
various  quarters  of  the  growth  of  this  spirit,  and  these  may  be 
taken  as  concrete  illustrations  of  its  workings.  There  is  a  senti- 
ment, for  instance,  in  favor  of  what  we  call  "prohibition" — 
an  example  of  the  extreme  that  is  apt  to  precede  moderation. 
The  moderate  term,  of  course,  is  temperance,  for  temperance 
implies  self-control.  Wave  after  wave  of  "prohibition"  has  swept 
over  the  country,  leaving  some  states — to  use  the  vivid  expres- 
sion— high  and  dry.  Whatever  of  value  there  is  hi  this  sentiment 
is  the  result  of  a  conviction  dawning  on  our  people  that  alcoholic 
beverages  are  what  modern  economics  aptly  call  tilth,  in  contra- 
distinction to  wealth.  The  educated  citizen  of  a  democracy  must 
become  familiar  with  the  deteriorating  effects  of  alcohol,  its 
influence  on  hand  and  brain  and  the  consequent  loss  in  individual 
service,  as  well  as  the  degeneracy  and  insanity  that  follow  its 
excessive  use.  A  people  who  have  been  deprived  of  alcohol  by  a 
benevolent  government  will  undoubtedly  be  a  saner  and  healthier 
people,  but  they  will  neither  be  as  intelligent  nor  as  efficient  nor 
as  developed  as  that  people  which  ultimately  arrives  at  the  know- 
ledge as  to  why  alcohol  is  harmful  and  paralyzing  to  efficiency, 
and  which  voluntarily  deprives  itself  of  it.  Here  is  the  principle 
of  democracy  hi  a  nutshell.  A  public  opinion  is  gradually  created 
by  an  educative  process,  and  laws  follow  it  as  a  matter  of  course. 
On  the  other  hand,  "prohibition"  that  has  not  an  educated 
public  opinion  behind  it  is  a  laughing-stock,  as  the  experience  of 
some  of  our  states  hi  New  England  and  elsewhere  has  proved. 

There  is  a  new  spirit  in  the  universities,  a  healthier  and 
sounder  public  opinion  than  existed  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth 


324  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

century;  a  new  interest  in  and  knowledge  of  government  and 
enthusiasm  for  democracy,  with  a  desire  to  share  its  tasks  and 
responsibilities.  The  response  to  the  call  of  the  training-camps 
at  Plattsburg  and  elsewhere  is  an  encouraging  indication  of  it. 

Peculiarly  significant,  however,  is  the  birth  of  this  new  spirit 
among  employers  of  labor — an  indication  that  emulation  may 
replace  competition.  There  is  no  need  to  be  cynical  on  this  score, 
to  insist  that  the  men  who  control  great  corporations  and  com- 
binations of  capital  have  been  frightened  out  of  many  practices 
in  which  they  hitherto  have  indulged.  There  can  be  no  question 
that  the  public  attitude  toward  these  practices  has  changed, 
and  it  would  be  stupid  and  un-American  to  maintain  that  this 
opinion  has  not  permeated  the  element  that  employs  labor, 
and  made  them  more  American  also.  This  emulative  spirit,  this 
indication  of  the  dawning  of  enlightened  self-interest,  this  will- 
ingness to  put  a  shoulder  to  the  wheel,  is  at  present  more 
marked  among  employers  of  the  large  corporations.  But  it 
will  spread,  and  is  spreading.  Even  as  we  have  today  in  the 
medical  profession  an  association,  an  emulative  body  of  medical 
opinion  purifying  that  profession  of  quackery  and  fraud  and 
strictly  commercial  practice,  even  as  we  have  among  the 
lawyers  bar  associations,  so  we  shall  have  among  business 
men  and  employers  a  growing  element  that  sets  its  face  against 
practices  hitherto  indulged  in,  making  these  practices  more  and 
more  difficult  of  accomplishment  by  the  remnant.  When 
employers  of  their  own  initiative  take  steps  to  insure  the  safety 
and  health  of  their  employees,  and  at  their  own  risk  make  experi- 
ments that  tend  toward  the  ultimate  establishment  of  industrial 
democracy,  toward  giving  the  working  man  a  share  and  interest 
in  the  industry,  labor  must  respond.  Little  by  little  individual 
animosities  are  broken  down  and  class  animosity  is  weakened. 
It  makes  no  difference  if  these  experiments  with  a  view  to  indus- 
trial democracy  do  not  meet  the  demands  of  extremists;  it  makes 
no  difference  whether  motives  are  mixed  if  the  good  be  predomi- 
nant. If  the  spirit  is  there,  we  may  trust  to  its  working.  Our 
watchwords  must  be  patience  and  faith,  faith  that  our  great 
problem  of  industrial  democracy  will  one  day  be  solved  by  the 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  325 

same  principle  of  equality  of  opportunity,  by  the  same  trust  in 
man  that  solved  for  us  the  problem  of  political  democracy. 

A  nation  saturated  with  the  conviction  that  all  should  have  an 
equal  chance,  imbued  with  this  volunteer,  emulative  spirit 
instilled  by  education  and  growing  out  of  experience,  cannot 
ultimately  go  wrong.  Let  us  therefore  make  our  individual  con- 
tributions, and  be  assured  that  it  is  better  to  give  than  to  receive. 


CAN  DEMOCRACY  BE  ORGANIZED?1 
EDWIN  ANDERSON  ALDERMAN 

[Edwin  Anderson  Alderman  (1861 )  was  born  in  Wilmington,  North 

Carolina.  He  was  educated  at  the  University  of  North  Carolina,  and  was 
for  several  years  a  teacher  in  the  public  schools  of  North  Carolina.  He  has 
been  successively  professor  of  pedagogy  at  the  University  of  North  Caro- 
lina, president  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina,  president  of  Tulane 
University,  and,  since  1904,  president  of  the  University  of  Virginia.  He  has 
been  strongly  interested  in  political  and  social  questions,  and  his  addresses, 
delivered  with  the  accomplishments  of  a  finished  orator,  have  been  brilliant 
discussions  of  many  important  questions.  The  selection  here  given  was 
originally  an  address  before  the  North  Carolina  Literary  and  Historical 
Society  in  1915.] 

The  United  States  of  America  is  one  of  the  oldest  govern- 
ments on  earth.  England  and  Russia  alone,  among  the  nations 
of  Europe,  equal  it  in  age,  and  even  England  has  undergone 
such  radical  changes  in  the  past  century,  as  compared  with  the 
United  States,  as  to  constitute  us,  with  our  unchanged  govern- 
ment since  1789,  the  most  stable  of  modern  nations.  Our  near- 
ness to  the  perspective  and  our  absorption  in  our  own  life  have 
blinded  us  to  the  inspiring  National  panorama,  as  it  has  unfolded 
itself  before  the  world.  First,  a  group  of  rustic  communities, 
making  common  cause  in  behalf  of  ancient  guarantees  of  English 
freedom;  then  suspicious  colonies,  unused  to  the  ways  of  democ- 
racies, striving  after  some  bond  amid  the  clash  of  jealous  inter- 
ests; then  a  wonderful  paper- writing,  compact  of  high  sense  and 

iFrom  Proceedings  of  the  North  Carolina  Literary  and  Historical  Society,  1915, 
Reprinted  by  permission. 


326  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

human  foresight  and  tragic  compromise;  then  a  young  republic, 
lacking  the  instinct  of  unity,  but  virile,  unlovely,  raw,  wayward, 
in  its  confident  young  strength.  Some  confused  decades  of  sad, 
earnest  effort  to  pluck  out  an  evil  growth  planted  in  its  life  by 
the  hard  necessities  of  compromise  by  the  fathers,  but  which 
needs  must  blossom  into  the  flower  of  civil  war  before  it  could  be 
plucked  out  and  thrown  to  the  void.  Then  young  manhood, 
nursing  its  youth,  whole  and  indivisible,  proven  by  trial  of  fire 
and  dark  days,  opening  its  eye  upon  a  new  world  of  steam  and 
force,  and  seizing  greedily  and  selfishly  every  coign  of  vantage; 
and  today  the  most  venerable  republic,  the  richest  of  nations, 
the  champion  and  exemplar  of  world  democracy. 

No  nation,  I  venture  to  assert,  was  ever  born  grounded  on 
so  definite  and  fixed  a  principle  and  with  so  conscious  a  purpose. 
Such  a  wealth  of  hope  for  humanity  never  before  gathered  about 
a  mere  political  experiment,  and  such  a  mass  of  pure  idealism 
never  before  suffused  itself  into  the  framework  of  a  state.  How 
can  such  a  nation  so  begun,  so  advanced,  so  beset,  be  so  guided, 
that  all  of  its  citizens  shall  indeed  become  free  men,  entering 
continually  into  the  possession  of  intellectual,  material,  and 
moral  benefits?  How  can  a  people  devoted  to  individualism  and 
freedom  retain  that  individualism  which  guarantees  freedom  and 
yet  engraft  upon  their  social  order  that  genius  for  cooperation 
which  alone  insures  power  and  progress?  These  are  the  final 
interrogatories  of  democracy  as  a  sane  vision  glimpses  it,  robbed 
of  its  earlier  illusions.  The  fathers  of  this  republic  did  not  under- 
stand the  present  mould  of  democracy.  The  very  word  was 
obnoxious  to  them.  Their  ideal  was  a  state  the  citizens  of  which 
chose  their  leaders  and  then  trusted  them.  They  did  not  fore- 
see the  socialized  state.  They  did  not  envisage  a  minute  and 
paternal  organization  of  society  which  may  be  achieved  alike  by 
Prussian  absolutism  or  mere  socialism,  which  is  chronologically, 
if  not  logically,  the  child  of  democracy.  The  fear  that  tugged  at 
their  hearts  was  the  fear  of  tyranny,  the  dread  of  kings,  the 
denial  of  self -direction,  which  prevented  a  man  from  speaking 
his  opinion  or  going  his  way  as  he  willed.  Their  democracy  was 
a  working  government  which  should  give  effect  to  the  will  of  the 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  327 

people  and  at  the  same  time  provide  sufficient  safeguard  for 
individual  liberty.  The  emphasis  of  the  time  was  everywhere 
upon  the  rights  of  the  individual  rather  more  than  upon  the 
duties  of  the  citizen.  When  their  theories,  as  Mr.  Hadley  points 
out,  seemed  likely  to  secure  this  result,  the  fathers  published 
them  boldly;  when  they  seemed  likely  to  interfere,  they  ignored 
them.  The  creed,  then,  which  had  a  religious  sanction  in  an  age 
of  moral  imagination  to  men  of  superb  human  enthusiasm  like 
Washington,  Franklin,  Jefferson,  and  Adams,  was  the  belief  that 
democracy,  considered  as  individual  freedom,  was  the  final  form 
of  human  society.  It  is  idle  to  deny  that  a  century  of  trial  has 
somewhat  dulled  the  halo  about  this  ancient  concept  of  democ- 
racy, but  in  my  judgment  only  to  men  of  little  faith.  It  is  quite 
true  that  our  democracy  of  today  is  not  what  Rousseau  thought 
it  would  be,  nor  Lord  Byron,  nor  Shelley,  nor  Karl  Marx.  But 
as  we  meditate  about  it  and  conclude  that  it  has  not  realized  all 
of  its  hopes,  we  ought  to  try  to  settle  first  what  it  has  done  and 
then  place  that  to  its  credit.  Here  are  some  things  that  I  think 
democracy  has  done,  or  helped  to  do.  It  has  abated  sectarian 
fury.  Sectarian  fury  is  ridiculous  in  this  age;  it  was  not  always 
so.  It  has  abolished  slavery.  It  has  protected  and  enlarged 
manhood  suffrage,  and  has  gone  far  toward  womanhood  suf- 
frage. It  has  mitigated  much  social  injustice.  It  has  devel- 
oped a  touching  and  almost  sublime  faith  in  the  power  of 
education,  illustrating  it  by  expending  six  hundred  million  dollars 
a  year  in  the  most  daring  thing  that  democracy  has  ever  tried 
to  do:  namely,  to  fit  for  citizenship  every  human  being  born 
within  its  borders.  It  has  increased  kindness  and  gentleness,  and 
thus  diminished  the  fury  of  partisanship.  It  has  preserved  the 
form  of  the  Union  through  the  storm  of  a  civil  war,  and  yet  has 
had  power  to  touch  with  healing  unity  and  forgiveness  its  pas- 
sions and  tragedies.  It  has  conquered  and  civilized  a  vast  con- 
tinent. It  has  developed  great  agencies  of  culture  and  has  some- 
how made  itself  a  symbol  of  individual  prosperity.  It  has 
developed  a  common  consciousness  and  a  volunteer  statesman- 
ship among  its  free  citizens  as  manifested  more  strikingly  than 
elsewhere  in  the  world  in  great  educational,  religious,  scientific 


328  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

and  philanthropic  societies,  which  profoundly  influence  and 
mould  society.  Out  of  what  other  state  could  have  issued  as  a 
volunteer  movement  so  efficient  an  agency  as  the  Commission 
for  the  Relief  of  Belgium  or  the  Rockefeller  Sanitary  Com- 
mission? It  has  permitted  and  fostered  the  growth  of  a  public 
press  of  gigantic  power  reflecting  the  crudities  and  impulses  of  a 
vast  and  varied  population,  but  charged  with  a  fierce  idealism 
and  staunch  patriotism  that  have  almost  given  it  a  place  among 
the  coordinate  branches  of  our  organized  government.  It  has 
stimulated  inventive  genius  and  business  enterprise  to  a  point 
never  before  reached  in  human  annals.  It  has  brought  to  Ameri- 
can-mindedness  millions  of  men  of  all  races,  creeds,  and  ideals. 
I  do  not,  therefore,  think  that  democracy  as  it  has  evolved 
among  us  has  failed.  What  autocracy  on  earth  has  done  as  much? 
It  has  justified  itself  of  the  sufferings  and  sacrifices  and  the 
dreams  of  the  men  who  established  it  in  this  new  land.  But  it 
has  also  without  doubt,  by  the  very  trust  that  it  places  in  men, 
developed  new  shapes  of  temptations  and  wrong-doing.  Democ- 
racy, like  a  man's  character,  is  never  clear  out  of  danger.  The 
moral  life  of  men,  said  Froude,  is  like  the  flight  of  a  bird  in  the 
air;  he  is  sustained  only  by  effort,  and  when  he  ceases  to  exert 
himself  he  falls.  And  the  same,  it  seems  to  me,  is  impressively 
true  of  institutional  and  governmental  life. 

Patriotism — which  is  hard  to  define  and  new  with  every  age — 
and  public  spirit — which  is  hard  to  define  and  new  with  every 
age — must  constantly  redefine  themselves.  Patriotism  meant 
manhood's  rights  when  Washington  took  it  to  his  heart.  It 
somehow  spelled  culture,  refinement  and  distinction  of  mind 
when  Emerson  in  his  Phi  Beta  Kappa  address  besought  the 
sluggish  intellect  of  his  country  to  look  up  from  under  its  iron 
lids.  It  signified  national  ideals  and  theories  of  government  to 
the  soldiers  of  Lee  and  to  the  soldiers  of  Grant.  It  meant  indus- 
trial greatness  and  a  splendid  desire  to  annex  nature  to  man's 
uses  when  the  great  business  leaders  of  this  generation  and  of 
the  last  generation  built  up  their  great  businesses  and  tied  the 
Union  together  hi  a  unity  of  steel  and  steam  more  completely 
than  all  the  wars  could  do,  and  did  it  with  a  patriotism  and  a 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  329 

statesmanship  and  an  imagination  that  no  man  can  deny.  The 
honest  businessman  needs  somebody  to  praise  him.  He  has 
done  a  great  service  in  this  country,  and  when  he  is  steady  and 
honest  there  is  no  greater  force  hi  all  our  life.  A  decade  ago 
patriotism  in  America  meant  a  reaction  from  an  unsocial  and 
selfish  individualism  to  restraint  and  consideration  for  the  general 
welfare,  expressing  itself  in  a  cry  for  moderation  and  fairness  and 
justice  and  sympathy  hi  the  use  of  power  and  wealth  as  the 
states  of  spirit  and  mind  that  alone  can  safeguard  republican 
ideals.  The  emphasis,  as  I  have  said,  was  formerly  on  the  rights 
of  man;  it  is  getting  to  be  placed,  as  Mazzini  preached,  upon  the 
duties  of  man.  If  in  our  youth  and  feverish  strength  there  had 
grown  up  a  spirit  of  avarice  and  a  desire  for  quick  wealth,  and 
a  theory  of  life  in  lesser  minds  that  estimated  money  as  every- 
thing and  was  willing  to  do  anything  for  money,  that  very  fact 
served  to  define  the  patriotic  duty  and  mood  of  the  national 
mind.  This  reawakened  patriotism  of  the  common  good  had  the 
advantage  of  appeal  to  a  sound  public  conscience,  and  of  being 
supported  by  a  valid  public  opinion.  The  part  that  vulgar  cun- 
ning has  played  in  creating  great  fortunes  has  been  made  known 
to  this  democracy  and  they  are  coming  to  know  the  genuine 
from  the  spurious,  and  some  who  were  once  looked  at  with  ad- 
miration and  approval  as  great  ones,  are  not  now  seen  in  that 
light. 

This  very  growth  in  discernment  gave  us  power  to  see  in  a 
nobler  and  truer  light,  for  the  people  of  America,  the  names  of 
those  upright  souls  hi  business  and  in  politics — and  there  are 
many  noble  men  hi  business  and  politics — who  have  held  true 
hi  a  heady  time  and  who  have  kept  clean  and  kept  human  their 
public  sympathies  and  their  republican  ideals  and  by  so  doing 
have  kept  sweet  then*  country's  fame.  Democracy  simply  had 
met  and  outfaced  one  of  the  million  moral  crises  that  are  likely 
to  assail  free  government,  and  I  believe  that  it  is  cleaner  today 
in  ruling  passion,  in  motive,  and  in  practice  than  it  has  been  in 
fifty  years. 

It  is  now  clear  to  all  minds  that  the  movement  of  our  business 
operations  in  this  republic,  unregulated  and  proceeding  along 


330  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

individualistic  lines,  had  come  perilously  near  to  developing  a 
scheme  of  monopoly  and  a  union  of  our  political  machinery  with 
the  forces  of  private  gain  that  might  easily  have  transformed  our 
democracy  into  some  ugly  form  of  tyranny  and  injustice.  We 
have  halted  this  tendency  somewhat  tardily,  but  resolutely,  and 
the  nerves  of  the  Nation  were  somewhat  shaken  by  the  very 
thought  of  what  might  have  been,  very  much  as  a  man  gazes 
with  gratitude  and  yet  with  fear  upon  a  hidden  precipice  over 
which  his  pathway  led.  We  had  been  saying  over  and  over  to 
ourselves  with  fierce  determination  that  this  nation  should 
remain  democratic,  and  should  not  become  plutocratic  or  auto- 
cratic or  socialistic;  and  we  should  find  the  way  to  guarantee 
this.  All  about  us  were  heard  the  voices  of  those  who  thought 
they  saw  the  way  and  who  were  beckoning  men  to  follow,  but 
new  dangers  faced  us,  however,  even  as  we  left  the  ancient  high- 
way and  attempted  to  cut  new  paths,  for  in  endeavoring  to  make 
it  possible  for  democracy,  as  we  understood  it,  and  a  vast 
industrialism,  as  we  had  developed  it,  to  live  together  justly 
under  the  same  political  roof,  we  had  plainly  come  to  a  point 
where  there  was  danger  of  our  government  developing  into  a 
system  of  state  socialism  in  conflict  with  our  deepest  tradi- 
tions and  convictions.  The  leadership  of  the  future,  therefore, 
would  have  a  triple  problem — to  protect  the  people  against 
privilege,  to  raise  the  levels  of  democratic  living,  and  to  pre- 
serve for  the  people  the  ancient  guarantees  and  inestimable 
advantages  of  representative  government  and  individual 
initiative. 

You  will  observe  that  I  have  thus  far  spoken  as  a  citizen 
preoccupied  with  the  thoughts  of  that  ancient  world  which 
ended  on  August  i,  1914,  and  I  have  not  permitted  myself  to 
align  and  examine  in  full  the  perils  and  weaknesses  of  democratic 
society  as  they  had  manifested  themselves  under  conditions  of 
peace  and  apparent  prosperity.  These  weaknesses  had  already 
begun,  under  the  strain  of  ordinary  industrial  life,  to  reveal 
themselves  under  five  general  aspects,  each  aspect  being  in 
essence  a  sort  of  revulsion  or  excess  of  feeling  from  what  were 
considered  definite  political  virtues: — 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  331 

1.  A  contempt  of  obedience  as  a  virtue  too  closely  allied  to 

servility. 

2.  A  disregard  of  discipline  as  smacking  too  much  of  docility. 

3.  An  impatience  with  trained  technical  skill  as  seeming  to 
affirm  that  one  man  is  not  so  good  as  another. 

4.  A  failure  to  understand  the  value  of  the  common  man  as 
a  moral  and  political  asset  and  an  inability  to  coordinate  educa- 
tion to  daily  life  as  a  means  of  forwarding  national  ends  and 
ideals. 

5.  A  crass  individualism  which  exalted  self  and  its  rights 
above  society  and  the  solemn  social  obligation  to  cooperate  for 
the  common  good. 

The  theory  of  democracy  which  alone  among  great  human 
movements  had  known  no  setback  for  a  century  of  time,  was 
fast  becoming  self-critical  and  disposed  to  self-analysis,  and 
especially  in  America  these  fundamental  weaknesses  were  being 
assailed  in  practical  forms.  The  liberal  or  progressive  movement 
in  our  politics  was  striking  at  the  theory  of  crass  individualism, 
and  after  the  unbalanced  fashion  of  social  reform  was  moving 
toward  pure  democracy  of  state  socialism  in  the  interest  of  com- 
munal welfare.  Our  old,  original,  intense  American  individualism, 
shamed  by  its  ill-governed  cities  and  lack  of  concern  for  popular 
welfare,  had  passed  forever.  Socialism,  considered  as  a  paternal 
form  of  government,  exercising  strict  regulation  over  men's  lives 
and  destroying  individual  energy  and  initiative,  was  still  feared 
and  resisted;  but  the  social  goal  of  democracy  was  becoming 
even  by  the  most  conservative,  to  be  considered  the  advance- 
ment and  improvement  of  society  by  a  protection  of  life  and 
health,  by  a  reformation  of  educational  methods  and  by  a  large 
amount  of  governmental  control  of  fundamentals  for  the  com- 
mon good.  A  multitude  of  laws,  ranging  from  laws  governing 
milk  for  babies,  to  public  parks  and  free  dispensaries  and  vast 
corporations,  attested  the  vigor  of  this  new  attitude.  And 
strange  to  say  this  new  spirit  was  not  wholly  self -begotten. 
Plutocracy,  with  its  common  sense,  its  economies  and  hatred  of 
waste,  its  organization  and  its  energy,  had  taught  us  much. 
We,  too,  had  caught  a  spirit  from  what  we  used  to  call  effete 


332  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

Europe.  Australia  taught  us  how  to  vote;  Belgium,  Germany, 
and  England  that  there  was  a  democracy  adapted  to  city  and 
factory  as  well  as  to  the  farm  and  countryside. 

The  forces  of  education  were  pleading  the  cause  of  team  work 
in  modern  life,  scientifically  directed,  not  by  amateurs  and 
demagogues,  but  by  experts  and  scientists,  whether  in  city 
government  or  public  hygiene  or  scientific  land  culture,  while 
seriousness  and  self-restraint  were  everywhere  the  themes  of 
public  teachers,  pleading  for  order  and  organization  as  an  ideal 
of  public  welfare,  nearly  as  vital  as  liberty  and  self-direction. 
And  then,  without  warning,  fell  out  this  great  upheaval  of  the 
world,  so  vast,  so  fundamental,  despite  its  sordid  and  stupid 
beginnings,  that  the  dullest  among  us  must  dimly  realize  that 
a  new  epoch  has  registered  itself  in  human  affairs.  War  is  a 
great  pitiless  flame.  It  sweeps  its  fiery  torch  along  the  ways  of 
men,  destroying  but  renovating,  killing  but  quickening,  and 
even  amid  its  horrors  of  corruption  and  death  leaving  white 
ashes  cleanly  and  fertile.  War  is  also  a  ghastly  mirror  in  which 
actualities  and  ideals  and  tendencies  reflect  themselves  in  awful 
vividness.  Who  caused  this  war,  who  will  be  aggrandized  by 
tLis  war — its  triumphs  and  humiliations — are  important  and 
moving,  but  not  vital  questions.  The  fundamental  question  is 
what  effect  will  its  reactions  have  upon  that  movement  of  the 
human  spirit  called  democracy,  begun  so  simply,  advanced  so 
steadfastly,  yesterday  acclaimed  as  the  highest  development  of 
human  polity,  but  today  already  being  sneered  at  and  snarled 
at  by  a  host  of  enemies.  Will  war,  the  harshest  of  human  facts, 
destroy,  weaken,  modify,  or  strengthen  essential  democracy? 
It  is  my  conviction  that  the  Allies  in  this  struggle  are  fighting 
for  democracy — at  least  for  the  brand  of  democracy  with  which 
my  spirit  is  familiar  and  which  my  soul  has  learned  to  love. 
Once  more  in  the  great  human  story,  the  choice  is  being  made 
between  contrasting  civilizations,  between  ideals  and  institu- 
tions, between  liberty  and  the  lesser  life.  Every  drop  of  my 
blood  leaps  to  sympathy  with  those  peoples  who,  heedless  of 
inexorable  efficiency,  dream  a  mightier  dream  of  an  order  directed 
by  justice,  invigorated  by  freedom,  instinct  with  the  higher  hap- 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  333 

piness  of  individual  liberty,  self-directed  to  reason  and  coo'pera- 
tion.  "For  what  avail  the  plough  or  sail,  or  land  or  life  if  freedom 
fail?"  The  very  weaknesses  of  democratic  government  under 
the  crucial  test  of  war  appeal  to  me.  The  tutelage  of  democracy 
breeds  love  of  justice,  the  methods  of  persuasion  and  debate, 
and  a  conception  of  life  which  makes  it  sweet  to  live  and  in  a 
way  destroys  the  temperament  for  war,  until  horror  and  wrong 
and  reversion  to  type  create  anew  the  savage  impulse.  Whatever 
way  victory  falls,  democracy  is  destined  to  stand  its  trial,  and  to 
be  submitted  to  a  merciless  cross-examination  by  the  mind  and 
spirit  of  man.  It  may  and  will  yield  up  some  of  its  aspirations; 
it  will  seize  and  adapt  some  of  the  weapons  of  its  foes;  it  may 
relinquish  some  of  its  ancient  theories  and  methods;  it  will  shed 
some  of  its  hampering  weaknesses;  but  it  will  still  remain  democ- 
racy, and  it  is  the  king,  the  autocrat,  and  the  mechanical  state 
which  will  suffer  in  the  end  rather  than  the  common  man  who, 
in  sublime  loyalty  to  race  and  flag,  is  now  reddening  the  soul  of 
Europe  with  his  blood,  or  the  great  principle  which  has  fascinated 
every  generous  thinking  soul  since  freedom  became  the  heritage 
of  man. 

The  Germans  are  a  mighty  race,  fecund  in  physical  force  and 
organizing  genius.  Like  the  French  of  1789,  they  are  now  more 
possessed  with  a  group  of  passionate  creative  impulses  than  any 
other  nation.  This  grandiose  idealism,  for  such  it  is,  seems  to  me 
reactionary,  but  it  is  held  with  a  sort  of  thrilling  devotion  and 
executed  with  undoubted  genius.  Nineteen  hundred  and  fourteen 
is  for  the  Prussians  a  sort  of  Prussian  Elizabethan  age,  in  which 
vast  dreams  and  ideas  glow  in  the  hearts  and  minds  of  Teutonic 
Raleighs,  Drakes,  and  Grenvilles,  ready  to  die  for  them.  The 
ideal  of  organization,  the  thought  of  a  great  whole  uniting  its 
members  for  effective  work  in  building  a  powerful  state,  and  the 
welding  of  a  monstrous  federal  union  of  nations  akin  in  interest 
and  civilizations  possess  the  Germanic  mind.  For  the  German 
the  individual  exists  for  the  state,  and  his  concept  of  the  state 
is  far  more  beautiful  and  spiritual  than  we  Americans  generally 
imagine.  The  state  is  to  be  the  resultant  of  the  best  thought 
and  efforts  of  all  its  units.  They  have  a  glorious  concept  of  com- 


334  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

munal  welfare,  but  to  them  parliamentarism  is  frankly  a  disease 
and  suffrage  a  menace.  To  them,  and  I  am  quoting  a  notable 
German  scholar,  "democracy  is  a  thing,  infirm  of  purpose, 
jealous,  timid,  changeable,  unthorough,  without  foresight, 
blundering  along  in  an  age  of  lucidity  guided  by  confused  in- 
stincts." On  the  whole  Germany  is  probably  better  governed  in 
external  forms  than  the  United  States  or  England.  The  material 
conditions  of  her  people  are  better,  her  cities  cleaner,  her  econo- 
mies finer,  her  social  life  better  administered,  and  her  power  to 
achieve  amazing  results  under  the  fiercest  of  tests  nearly  marvel- 
ous. The  world  cannot  and  probably  will  not  reject  as  vile  all 
this  German  scholarship,  concentration,  and  scientific  power. 
The  world  may  either  slavishly  imitate  Germany,  or  wisely 
modify  or  set  up  a  contrary  system  overtopping  the  German 
ideal  in  definite  accomplishment,  according  to  the  inclination  of 
the  scales  of  victory.  The  fatality  of  the  German  nation  is 
that  it  does  not  behold  the  world  as  it  is.  It  beholds  its  ideals 
and  is  logic-driven  to  their  achievement.  It  has  gone  from  the 
sand  waste  of  Brandenburg  to  world-power  by  force  and  the 
will  to  do,  and  by  force  and  will  it  seeks  its  will  and  hacks  its 
way  through.  It  is  enslaved  by  the  majesty  of  plan  and  pre- 
cision— the  power  of  concert.  Napoleon,  "that  ablest  of  historic 
men,"  as  Lord  Acton  called  him,  tried  all  this  once  and  failed. 
But  here  it  all  is  again,  with  its  weapons  of  flame  and  force. 
Germany,  apparently,  does  not  understand  the  fair  doctrine  of 
live  and  let  live.  Pride  sustains  its  soul,  and  ambition  directs  its 
energy.  In  spite  of  all  these  concrete  achievements  Germany 
does  not  seem  to  me  a  progressive  nation,  but  rather  a  Giant  of 
Reaction — a  sort  of  mixture,  as  someone  has  called  it,  of  Ancient 
Sparta  and  Modern  Science.  And  it  is  well  to  hold  in  mind  that 
this  mass-efficiency  is  brought  to  pass  by  subjecting  even  in  the 
minutest  particulars  the  individual  to  the  supreme  authority  of 
the  state.  This  subjection  is  scientific,  well-meant,  but  very 
minute. 

The  flaw  of  democracy  is  that  it  does  understand  and  sym- 
pathize with  the  soul  of  man,  but  is  so  sympathetic  with  his 
yearning  for  free  self-government  and  self-direction,  so  opposed 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  335 

to  force  as  a  moulding  agent,  so  jealous  of  initiative,  that  it 
has  not  yet  found  the  binding  thread  of  social  organization  by 
which  self-government  and  good  government  become  one  and 
the  same  thing.  Let  us  confess  that  "Les  mceurs  de  la  liberte'1 
cannot  be  the  manners  of  absolutism.  Debate,  political  agitation, 
bold,  popular  expression,  are  not  the  methods  of  smooth  precision 
and  relentless  order.  Napoleon  revealed  to  the  world  the  demo- 
cratic passion  and  passed  off  the  stage.  Perhaps  it  is  the  destiny 
of  the  Prussian  to  teach  us  administration  and  order  and  to 
put  us  in  the  way  of  finding  and  achieving  it  without  sacrificing 
our  liberties,  and  then  he,  too,  will  pass. 

To  work  out  a  free  democratic,  socialized  life,  wherein  the 
individual  is  not  lost  in  a  metaphysical  super-state,  nor  sunk  hi 
inaction  and  selfishness,  by  inducing  desire  for  such  life,  by 
applying  trained  intelligence  to  its  achievement,  and  by  sub- 
jecting ourselves  to  the  tests  and  disciplines  that  will  bring  it  to 
pass — that  is  the  task  of  American  democracy  and  indeed  of  a 
fuller,  deeper  world-wide  democracy.  The  center  of  gravity  of 
the  autocratic  state  is  in  the  state  itself,  and  in  such  ideals  as 
self-anointed  leaders  suggest.  The  effect  of  the  democracy  has 
been  to  shift  the  center  of  gravity  too  much  to  the  individual 
self  and  his  immediate  welfare. 

There  must  be  a  golden  mean  somewhere  and  we  must  find 
it.  When  the  great  readjustment  dawns,  when  the  gaping 
wounds  of  war  have  healed,  all  the  world  will  be  seeking  this 
golden  mean.  The  social  democrat  of  Germany,  who  is  silent 
now  in  his  splendid  National  devotion,  will  be  seeking  it;  the 
Russian  peasant,  inarticulate,  mystic,  reflective;  the  Frenchman 
with  his  clear  brain  and  forward-looking  soul;  the  Englishman 
wrapped  in  his  great  tradition.  Perhaps  hi  our  untouched  and 
undreamed  vigor,  we  shall  become  the  champions  of  the  great 
quest. 

;  There  would  be  fitness  in  such  a  result.  Here  continental 
democracy  was  born;  here  it  has  grown  great  upon  an  incom- 
parable soil  and  with  enormous  waste.  Let  us  prepare  for  our 
colossal  moral  and  practical  responsibilities  hi  the  world  life, 
therefore,  not  alone  by  preparing  commonsense  establishments 


336  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

of  force  on  land  and  sea,  until  such  time  as  human  reason  shall 
deem  them  not  needed,  but  by  the  greater  preparedness  of  self- 
restraint,  self-analysis,  and  self-discipline.  Let  us  not  surrender 
our  age-long  dream  of  good,  just  self-government  to  any  mechan- 
ical ideal  of  quickly  obtaining  material  results  erected  into  a 
crude  dogma  of  efficiency.  Democracy  must  know  how  to  get 
material  results  economically  and  quickly.  Democracy  must 
and  can  be  organized  to  that  end,  and  this  organization  will  un- 
doubtedly involve  certain  surrenders,  certain  social  and  political 
self-abnegations  in  the  interests  of  collectivism.  But  I  hold  the 
faith  that  all  this  can  be  done  yet,  retaining  in  the  family  of 
freedom  that  shining  jewel  of  individual  liberty  which  has 
glowed  in  our  life  since  the  beginning.  The  great  democratic 
nations — America,  England,  France,  Switzerland — have  before 
them,  therefore,  the  problem  of  retaining  their  standards  of 
individual  liberty,  and  yet  contriving  juster  and  finer  adminis- 
trative organs.  Certainly  the  people  that  have  built  this  Union 
can  learn  how  to  coordinate  the  activities  of  its  people  and  obtain 
results  as  definite  as  those  obtained  under  systems  of  mere 
authority. 

Since  my  college  days  I  have  been  hearing  about  and  admir- 
ing the  German  genius  for  research,  for  adaptation  of  scientific 
truth  and  for  organization.  Now  the  whole  world  stands  half 
astonished  and  half  envious  of  their  creed  of  efficiency.  In  so  far 
as  this  creed  is  opposed  to  slipshodness  and  waste,  it  is  altogether 
good,  but  the  question  arises,  Is  the  ability  to  get  things  done 
well  deadly  to  liberty,  or  is  it  consistent  with  personal  liberty? 
In  examining  German  progress,  I  do  not  find  as  many  examples 
of  supreme  individual  efficiency  or  independent  spirit  as  I  find 
in  the  democratic  nations.  The  steam  engine,  the  factory  system, 
telegraph,  telephone,  wireless,  electric  light,  the  gasoline  engine, 
aeroplane,  machine  gun,  the  submarine,  uses  of  rubber,  dread- 
naught,  the  mighty  names  of  Lister  and  Pasteur,  come  out  of 
the  democratic  nations.  The  distinctive  German  genius  is  for 
administration  and  adaptation,  rather  than  for  independent 
creation.  His  civil  service  is  the  finest  in  the  world.  He  knows 
what  he  wants.  He  decides  what  training  is  necessary  to  get 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  337 

that  result.  He  universalizes  that  training.  He  enforces  obe- 
dience to  its  discipline.  A.  man  must  have  skill;  he  must  obey; 
he  must  work;  he  must  cooperate.  The  freer  nations  desire  the 
same  results,  but  neglect  to  enforce  their  realization.  Their 
theory  of  government  forces  them  to  plead  for  its  attainment. 
Certain  classes  and  individuals  heed  this  persuasion,  and  in  an 
atmosphere  of  precious  freedom  great  personalities  spring  into 
being.  In  the  conflict  between  achievement  based  on  subjection 
and  splendid  obedience,  and  that  based  on  political  freedom, 
my  belief  is  that  the  system  of  political  and  social  freedom  will 
triumphantly  endure.  In  essence,  it  is  the  conflict  between  the 
efficiency  of  adaptation  and  organization  and  the  efficiency  of 
invention  and  creation.  What  autocracy  needs  is  the  thrill  and 
push  of  individual  liberty,  and  the  continental  peasant  will  get 
it  as  the  result  of  this  war,  for  the  guns  of  autocracy  are  cele- 
brating the  downfall  of  autocracy,  even  in  its  most  ancient  fast- 
ness— Russia.  These  autocracies  will  realize  their  real  greatness 
when  they  substitute  humility  for  pride,  freedom  for  accomplish- 
ment, as  compelling  national  motives.  What  democracy  needs 
is  the  discipline  of  patient  labor,  of  trained  skill,  of  thoroughness 
in  work,  and  a  more  socialized  conception  of  public  duty.  As 
President  Eliot  has  pointed  out,  the  German  theory  of  social 
organization  is  very  young,  and  her  literature,  philosophy,  and 
art  are  fairly  new.  It  is  a  bit  premature  to  concede  the  supreme 
validity  of  her  Kultur  and  of  her  political  organization  until  she 
can  point  to  such  names  as  Dante  and  Angelo,  Shakspere  and 
Milton,  Newton  and  Darwin  and  Pasteur,  and  until  such  names 
appear  in  her  political  history  as  Washington  and  Jefferson  and 
Burke.  This  is  not  meant  to  deny  the  surpassing  greatness  of 
her  music  and  her  philosophy,  nor  to  minimize  the  glory  of  her 
Goethes  or  Schillers  or  Lessings  or  Steins,  but  to  suggest  that 
she  has  not  yet  reached  the  superlative.  It  is  not  yet  quite  sure 
that  with  all  their  genius  for  organization  and  efficiency,  they 
may  not  be  self-directed  to  ruin.  Certainly  the  German  has  as 
much  to  learn  from  the  freer  nations  as  we  have  to  learn  from 
the  Teutonic  genius.  Switzerland  has  organized  her  democracy 
and  kept  her  personal  liberty,  and  there  is  no  finer  spectacle  on 
v 


338  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

earth  today  than  the  spectacle  of  France,  seed-sowing,  torch- 
bearing  France;  France,  that  has  touched  the  heights  and  sounded 
the  depths  of  human  experience  and  national  tragedy;  "La 
belle  France,"  that  has  substituted  duty  for  glory  as  a  national 
motive,  and  has  kept  her  soul  free  in  the  valley  of  humiliation; 
grim,  patient,  silent,  far-seeing  France,  clinging  to  her  republican 
ideals  and  reorganizing  her  life  from  hovel  to  palace  in  the  very 
impact  of  conflict  and  death,  so  that  it  is  enabled  to  present  to 
the  world  the  finest  example  of  organized  efficiency  and  military 
glory  that  the  world  has  seen  in  some  generations.  In  order  to 
organize  an  autocracy,  the  rulers  ordain  that  it  shall  get  in  order 
and  provide  the  means  to  bring  about  that  end.  To  organize  a 
democracy,  we  must  organize  its  soul,  and  give  it  power  to 
create  its  own  ideals.  It  is  primarily  a  peace  organization,  and 
that  is  proof  that  it  is  the  forward  movement  of  the  human  soul 
and  not  the  movement  of  scientific  reaction.  It  is  through  a 
severe  mental  training  in  our  schools  and  a  return  to  the  concep- 
tion of  public  duty  which  guided  the  sword  and  uplifted  the 
heart  of  the  Founder  of  the  Republic  that  we  shall  find  strength 
to  organize  the  democracy  of  the  future,  revolutionized  by 
science  and  by  urban  life.  The  right  to  vote  implies  the  duty  to 
vote  right;  the  right  to  legislate,  the  duty  to  legislate  justly;  the 
right  to  judge  about  foreign  policy,  the  duty  to  fight  if  necessary; 
the  right  to  come  to  college,  the  duty  to  carry  one's  self  hand- 
somely at  college.  Our  youth  must  be  taught  to  use  their  senses, 
to  reason  simply  and  correctly,  from  exact  knowledge  thus 
brought  to  them  to  attain  to  sincerity  in  thought  and  judgment 
through  work  and  patience.  In  our  home  and  civic  life,  we  need 
some  moral  equivalent  for  the  training  which  somehow  issues  out 
of  war — the  glory  of  self-sacrifice,  obedience  to  just  authority, 
contempt  of  ease,  and  a  realization  that  through  thoughtful, 
collective  effort  great  results  will  be  obtained.  A  great  spiritual 
glory  will  come  to  these  European  nations  through  their  sorrow 
and  striving,  which  will  express  itself  in  great  poems  and  great 
literature.  They  are  preparing  new  shrines  at  which  mankind 
will  worship.  Let  us  take  care  that  prosperity  be  not  our  sole 
national  endowment.  War  asks  of  men  self-denials  and  sacrifice 


CHANGES  AND  ADJUSTMENTS  339 

for  ideals.  Peace  must  somehow  do  the  same.  Autocracy  orders 
men  to  forget  self  for  an  over-self  called  the  state.  Democracy 
must  inspire  men  to  forget  self  for  a  still  higher  thing  called 
humanity. 

There  stands  upon  the  steps  of  the  Sub-Treasury  building,  in 
Wall  Street,  the  bronze  figure  of  an  old  Virginia  country  gentle- 
man looking  out  with  his  honest  eyes  upon  the  sea  of  hurrying, 
gain-getting  men.  This  statue  is  a  remarkable  allegory,  for  in 
his  grave,  thoughtful  person,  Washington  embodies  that  form 
of  public  spirit,  that  balance  of  character,  that  union  of  force 
and  justice  that  redefines  democracy.  Out  of  his  lips  seems  to 
issue  the  great  creed  which  is  the  core  of  democratic  society,  and 
around  which  this  finer  organization  shall  be  solidly  built. 
Power  rests  on  fitness  to  rule.  Fitness  to  rule  rests  on  trained 
minds  and  spirits.  You  can  trust  men  if  you  will  train  them.  The 
object  of  power  is  the  public  good.  The  ultimate  judgment  of 
mankind  in  the  mass  is  a  fairly  good  judgment 


IN    ARMS    FOR    DEMOCRACY 


THE  WORLD  CONFLICT  IN  ITS  RELATION  TO 
AMERICAN  DEMOCRACY1 

WALTER  LIPPMANN 

[Walter  Lippmann  (1889 )  was  born  in  New  York  City.    He  was 

graduated  from  Harvard  in  1910,  and  for  a  time  was  assistant  in  philosophy 
in  that  institution.  Later  he  formed  editorial  connections  in  New  York, 
writing  much  for  the  periodical  press.  He  is  the  author  of  several  books 
dealing  with  politics  and  kindred  subjects.  The  article  here  reprinted,  which 
gives  a  comprehensive  review  of  the  conditions  leading  to  America's  entering 
the  world  war,  was  originally  read  before  a  meeting  of  the  American  Academy 
of  Political  and  Social  Science,  in  the  summer  of  1917,  shortly  after  this 
step  had  been  taken.] 


The  way  in  which  President  Wilson  directed  America's 
entrance  into  the  war  has  had  a  mighty  effect  on  the  public 
opinion  of  the  world.  Many  of  those  who  are  disappointed  or 
pleased  say  they  are  surprised.  They  would  not  be  surprised 
had  they  made  it  their  business  this  last  year  to  understand  the 
policy  of  their  government. 

In  May,  1916,  the  President  made  a  speech  which  will  be 
counted  among  the  two  or  three  decisive  utterances  of  American 
foreign  policy.  The  Sussex  pledge  had  just  been  extracted  from 
the  German  government,  and  on  the  surface  American  neutrality 
seemed  assured.  The  speech  was  an  announcement  that  Ameri- 
can isolation  was  ended,  and  that  we  were  prepared  to  join  a 
League  of  Peace.  This  was  the  foundation  of  all  that  followed, 
and  it  was  intended  to  make  clear  to  the  world  that  America 
would  not  abandon  its  traditional  policy  for  imperialistic  adven- 

JFrom  Annals  of  the  American  Academy  of  Social  and  Political  Science,  vol.  Ixxii, 
p.  i  (July,  1917.) 

340 


72V  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  341 

ture,  that  if  America  had  to  fight  it  would  fight  for  the  peace  and 
order  of  the  world.  It  was  a  great  portent  in  human  history, 
but  it  was  overshadowed  at  the  time  by  the  opening  of  the 
presidential  campaign. 

Through  the  summer  the  President  insisted  again  and  again 
that  the  time  had  come  when  America  must  assume  its  share  of 
responsbility  for  a  better  organization  of  mankind.  In  the  early 
autumn  very  startling  news  came  from  Germany.  It  was  most 
confusing  because  it  promised  peace  maneuvers,  hinted  at  a 
separate  arrangement  with  the  Russian  court  party,  and  at  the 
resumption  of  unlimited  submarine  warfare.  The  months  from 
November  to  February  were  to  tell  the  story.  Never  was  the 
situation  more  perplexing.  The  prestige  of  the  Allies  was  at  low 
ebb,  there  was  treachery  in  Russia,  and,  as  Mr.  Lansing  said, 
America  was  on  the  verge  of  war.  We  were  not  only  on  the  verge 
of  war,  but  on  the  verge  of  a  bewildering  war  which  would  not 
command  the  whole-hearted  support  of  the  American  people. 

With  the  election  past,  and  a  continuity  of  administration 
assured,  it  became  President  Wilson's  task  to  make  some  bold 
move  which  would  clarify  the  muddle.  While  he  was  preparing 
this  move,  the  German  chancellor  made  his  high-handed  pro- 
posal for  a  blind  conference.  That  it  would  be  rejected  was  obvi- 
ous. That  the  rejection  would  be  followed  by  the  submarine  war 
was  certain.  The  danger  was  that  America  would  be  drawn  into 
the  war  at  the  moment  when  Germany  appeared  to  be  offering 
the  peace  for  which  the  bulk  of  American  people  hoped.  We  know 
now  that  the  peace  Germany  was  prepared  to  make  last  Decem- 
ber was  the  peace  of  a  conqueror.  But  at  the  time  Germany  could 
pose  as  a  nation  which  had  been  denied  a  chance  to  end  the  war. 
It  was  necessary,  therefore,  to  test  the  sincerity  of  Germany 
by  asking  publicly  for  a  statement  of  terms.  The  President's 
circular  note  to  the  powers  was  issued.  This  note  stated  more 
precisely  than  ever  before  that  America  was  ready  to  help 
guarantee  the  peace,  and  at  the  same  time  it  gave  all  the  bellig- 
erents a  chance  to  show  that  they  were  fighting  for  terms  which 
could  be  justified  to  American  opinion.  The  note  was  very 
much  misunderstood  at  first  because  the  President  had  said 


342  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

that,  since  both  sides  claimed  to  be  fighting  for  the  same  thing, 
neither  could  well  refuse  to  define  the  terms.  The  misunder- 
standing soon  passed  away  when  the  replies  came.  Germany 
brushed  the  President  aside,  and  showed  that  she  wanted  a 
peace  by  intrigue.  The  Alh'es  produced  a  document  which  con- 
tained a  number  of  formulas  so  cleverly  worded  that  they  might 
be  stretched  to  cover  the  wildest  demands  of  the  extremists  or 
contracted  to  a  moderate  and  just  settlement.  Above  all,  the 
Allies  assented  to  the  League  of  Peace  which  Germany  had  dis- 
missed as  irrelevant. 

The  war  was  certain  to  go  on  with  America  drawn  in.  On 
January  22,  after  submarine  warfare  had  been  decided  upon  but 
before  it  had  been  proclaimed,  the  President  made  his  address 
to  the  Senate.  It  was  an  international  program  for  democracy. 
It  was  also  a  last  appeal  to  German  liberals  to  avert  a  catastro- 
phe. They  did  not  avert  it,  and  on  February  i,  Germany  attacked 
the  whole  neutral  world.  That  America  would  not  submit  was 
assured.  The  question  that  remained  to  be  decided  was  the 
extent  of  our  participation  in  the  war.  Should  it  be  merely  de- 
fensive on  the  high  seas,  or  should  it  be  a  separate  war?  The  real 
source  of  confusion  was  the  treacherous  and  despotic  Russian 
government.  By  no  twist  of  language  could  a  partnership  with 
that  government  be  made  consistent  with  the  principles  laid 
down  by  the  President  in  his  address  to  the  Senate. 

The  Russian  Revolution  ended  that  perplexity  and  we  could 
enter  the  war  with  a  clear  conscience  and  a  whole  heart.  When 
Russia  became  a  republic  and  the  American  republic  became  an 
enemy,  the  German  empire  was  isolated  before  mankind  as  the 
final  refuge  of  autocracy.  The  principle  of  its  life  is  destructive 
of  the  peace  of  the  world.  How  destructive  that  principle  is, 
the  everwidening  circle  of  the  war  has  disclosed. 

n 

Our  task  is  to  define  that  danger  so  that  our  immense  sacrifices 
shah1  serve  to  end  it.  I  cannot  do  that  for  myself  without  turning 
to  the  origins  of  the  war  in  order  to  trace  the  logical  steps  by 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  343 

which  the  pursuit  of  a  German  victory  has  enlisted  the  enmity 
of  the  world. 

We  read  statements  by  Germans  that  there  was  a  conspiracy 
against  their  national  development,  that  they  found  themselves 
encircled  by  enemies,  that  Russia,  using  Serbia  as  an  instrument, 
was  trying  to  destroy  Austria,  and  that  the  Entente  had  already 
detached  Italy.  Supposing  that  all  this  were  true,  it  would  remain 
an  extraordinary  thing  that  the  Entente  had  succeeded  in  en- 
circling Germany.  Had  that  empire  been  a  good  neighbor  in 
Europe,  by  what  miracle  could  the  old  hostility  between  England 
and  France  and  Russia  have  been  wiped  out  so  quickly?  But 
there  is  positive  evidence  that  no  such  conspiracy  existed. 

Germany's  place  in  the  sun  is  Asia  Minor.  By  the  Anglo- 
German  agreement  of  June,  1914,  recently  published,  a  satis- 
factory arrangement  had  been  reached  about  the  economic 
exploitation  of  the  Turkish  empire.  Professor  Rohrbach  has 
acknowledged  that  Germany  was  given  concessions  "which 
exceeded  all  expectations,"  and  on  December  2,  1914,  when  the 
war  was  five  months  old,  von  Bethmann-Hollweg  declared  in 
the  Reichstag  that  "this  understanding  was  to  lessen  every 
possible  political  friction."  The  place  hi  the  sun  had  been  secured 
by  negotiation. 

But  the  road  to  that  place  lay  through  Austria-Hungary  and 
the  Balkans.  It  was  this  highway  which  Germany  determined  to 
control  absolutely;  and  the  chief  obstacle  on  that  highway  was 
Serbia  backed  by  Russia.  Into  the  complexities  of  that  Balkan 
intrigue  I  am  not  competent  to  enter.  We  need,  however,  do  no 
more  than  follow  Lord  Grey  in  the  belief  that  Austria  had  a 
genuine  grievance  against  Serbia,  a  far  greater  one  certainly 
than  the  United  States  has  ever  had  against  Mexico.  But 
Britain  had  no  stake  in  the  Austro-Serbian  quarrel  itself. 

It  had  an  interest  in  the  method  which  the  central  powers  took 
of  settling  the  quarrel.  When  Germany  declared  that  Europe 
could  not  be  consulted,  that  Austria  must  be  allowed  to  crush 
Serbia  without  reference  to  the  concert  of  Europe,  Germany  pro- 
claimed herself  an  enemy  of  international  order.  She  preferred  a 
war  which  involved  all  of  Europe  to  any  admission  of  the  fact 


344  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

that  a  cooperative  Europe  existed.  It  was  an  assertion  of  un- 
limited national  sovereignty  which  Europe  could  not  tolerate. 

This  brought  Russia  and  France  into  the  field.  Instantly 
Germany  acted  on  the  same  doctrine  of  unlimited  national 
sovereignty  by  striking  at  France  through  Belgium.  Had 
Belgium  been  merely  a  small  neutral  nation  the  crime  would 
still  have  been  one  of  the  worst  in  the  history  of  the  modern 
world.  The  fact  that  Belgium  was  an  internationalized  state 
has  made  the  invasion  the  master  tragedy  of  the  war.  For 
Belgium  represented  what  progress  the  world  had  made  towards 
cooperation.  If  it  could  not  survive  then  no  internationalism 
was  possible.  That  is  why  through  these  years  of  horror  upon 
horror,  the  Belgian  horror  is  the  fiercest  of  all.  The  burning,  the 
shooting,  the  starving,  and  the  robbing  of  small  and  inoffensive 
nations  is  tragic  enough.  But  the  German  crime  in  Belgium  is 
greater  than  the  sum  of  Belgium's  misery.  It  is  a  crime 
against  the  bases  of  faith  at  which  the  world  must  build  or 
perish. 

The  invasion  of  Belgium  instantly  brought  the  five  British 
democracies  into  the  war.  I  think  this  is  the  accurate  way  to 
state  the  fact.  Had  the  war  remained  a  Balkan  war  with  France 
engaged  merely  because  of  her  treaty  with  Russia,  had  the 
fighting  been  confined  to  the  Franco-German  frontier,  the  British 
empire  might  have  come  into  the  war  to  save  the  balance  of 
power  and  to  fulfil  the  naval  agreements  with  France  but  the 
conflict  would  probably  never  have  become  a  people's  war  in 
all  the  free  nations  of  the  empire.  Whatever  justice  there  may 
have  been  in  Austria's  original  quarrel  with  Serbia  and  Russia 
was  overwhelmed  by  the  exhibition  of  national  lawlessness  in 
Belgium. 

This  led  to  the  third  great  phase  of  the  war,  the  phase  which 
concerned  America  most  immediately.  The  Allies  directed  by 
Great  Britain  employed  sea  power  to  the  utmost.  They  barred 
every  road  to  Germany,  and  undoubtedly  violated  many  com- 
mercial rights  of  neutrals.  What  America  would  do  about  this 
became  of  decisive  importance.  It  if  chose  to  uphold  the  rights 
it  claimed,  it  would  aid  Germany  and  cripple  the  Allies.  If 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  345 

it  refused  to  do  more  than  negotiate  with  the  Allies,  it  had,  what- 
ever the  technicalities  of  the  case  might  be,  thrown  its  great 
weight  against  Germany.  It  had  earned  the  enmity  of  the  Ger- 
man government,  an  enmity  which  broke  out  into  intrigue  and 
conspiracy  on  American  soil.  Somewhere  in  the  winter  of  1915, 
America  was  forced  to  choose  between  a  policy  which  helped 
Germany  and  one  which  helped  the  Allies.  We  were  confronted 
with  a  situation  in  which  we  had  to  choose  between  opening  a 
road  to  Germany  and  making  an  enemy  of  Germany.  With  the 
proclamation  of  submarine  warfare  in  1915  we  were  told  that 
either  we  must  aid  Germany  by  crippling  sea  power  or  be  treated 
as  a  hostile  nation.  The  German  policy  was  very  simple: 
British  mastery  of  the  seas  must  be  broken.  It  could  be  broken 
by  an  American  attack  from  the  rear  or  by  the  German  sub- 
marine. If  America  refused  to  attack  from  the  rear,  America 
was  to  be  counted  as  an  enemy.  It  was  a  case  of  he  who  is  not  for 
me  is  against  me. 

To  such  an  alternative  there  was  but  one  answer  for  a  free 
people  to  make.  To  become  the  ally  of  the  conqueror  of  Belgium 
against  France  and  the  British  democracies  was  utterly  out  of 
the  question.  Our  choice  was  made  and  the  supreme  question  of 
American  policy  became:  how  far  will  Germany  carry  the  war 
against  us  and  how  hard  shall  we  strike  back?  That  we  were 
aligned  on  the  side  of  Germany's  enemies  no  candid  man,  I 
think,  can  deny.  The  effect  of  this  alignment  was  to  make  sea 
power  absolute.  For  mastery  of  the  seas  is  no  longer  the  posses- 
sion of  any  one  nation.  The  supremacy  of  the  British  navy  hi 
this  war  rests  on  international  consent,  on  the  consent  of  her 
allies  and  of  the  neutrals.  Without  that  consent  the  blockade  of 
Germany  could  not  exist,  and  the  decision  of  America  not  to 
resist  allied  sea  power  was  the  final  blow  which  cut  off  Germany 
from  the  world.  It  happened  gradually,  without  spectacular 
announcement,  but  history,  I  think,  will  call  it  one  of  the  deci- 
sive events  of  the  war. 

The  effect  was  to  deny  Germany  access  to  the  resources  of 
the  neutral  world,  and  to  open  these  resources  to  the  Allies. 
Poetic  justice  never  devised  a  more  perfect  retribution.  The 


346  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

nation  which  had  struck  down  a  neutral  to  gain  a  military  ad- 
vantage found  the  neutral  world  a  partner  of  its  enemies. 

That  partnership  between  the  neutral  world  and  Germany's 
enemies  rested  on  merchant  shipping.  This  suggested  a  new 
theory  of  warfare  to  the  German  government.  It  decided  that 
since  every  ship  afloat  fed  the  resources  of  its  enemies,  it  might 
be  a  good  idea  to  sink  every  ship  afloat.  It  decided  that  since  all 
the  highways  of  the  world  were  the  communications  of  the 
Allies,  those  communications  should  be  cut.  It  decided  that  if 
enough  ships  were  destroyed,  it  didn't  matter  what  ships  or 
whose  ships,  England  and  France  would  have  to  surrender  and 
make  a  peace  on  the  basis  of  Germany's  victories  in  Europe. 

Therefore,  on  the  3ist  of  January,  1917,  Germany  abolished 
neutrality  in  the  world.  The  policy  which  began  by  denying  that 
a  quarrel  in  the  Balkans  could  be  referred  to  Europe,  went  on  to 
destroy  the  internationalized  state  of  Belgium,  culminated  in  in- 
discriminate attack  upon  the  merchant  shipping  of  all  nations. 
The  doctrine  of  exclusive  nationalism  had  moved  through  these 
three  dramatic  phases  until  those  who  held  it  were  at  war  with 
mankind, 

m 

The  terrible  logic  of  Germany's  policy  had  a  stupendous 
result.  By  striking  at  the  bases  of  all  international  order,  Ger- 
many convinced  even  the  most  isolated  of  neutrals  that  order 
must  be  preserved  by  common  effort.  By  denying  that  a  society 
of  nations  exists,  a  society  of  nations  has  been  forced  into  exis- 
tence. The  very  thing  Germany  challenged  Germany  has  estab- 
lished. Before  1914  only  a  handful  of  visionaries  dared  to  hope 
for  some  kind  of  federation.  The  orthodox  view  was  that  each 
nation  had  a  destiny  of  its  own,  spheres  of  influence  of  its  own, 
and  that  it  was  somehow  beneath  the  dignity  of  a  great  state  to 
discuss  its  so-called  vital  interests  with  other  governments.  It 
was  a  world  almost  without  common  aspiration,  with  few  effec- 
tive common  ideals.  Europe  was  split  into  shifting  alliances, 
democracies  and  autocracies  jumbled  together.  America  lay 
apart  with  a  budding  imperialism  of  its  own  China  was  marked 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  347 

as  the  helpless  victim  of  exploitation.  That  old  political  system 
was  one  in  which  the  German  view  was  by  no  means  altogether 
disreputable.  Internationalism  was  half-hearted  and  generally 
regarded  somewhat  cynically. 

What  Germany  did  was  to  demonstrate  ad  nauseam  the  doc- 
trine of  competitive  nationalism.  Other  nations  had  applied  it 
here  and  there  cautiously  and  timidly.  No  other  nation  in  our 
time  had  ever  applied  it  with  absolute  logic,  with  absolute 
preparation,  and  with  absolute  disregard  of  the  consequences. 
Other  nations  nad  dallied  with  it,  compromised  about  it,  muddled 
along  with  it.  But  Germany  followed  through,  and  Germany 
taught  the  world  just  where  the  doctrine  leads. 

Out  of  the  necessities  of  defense  men  against  it  have  gradually 
formulated  the  ideals  of  a  cooperative  nationalism.  From  all 
parts  of  the  world  there  has  been  a  movement  of  ideals  working 
slowly  towards  one  end,  towards  a  higher  degree  of  spiritual 
unanimity  than  has  ever  been  known  before.  China  and  India 
have  been  stirred  out  of  their  dependence.  The  American 
republic  has  abandoned  its  isolation.  Russia  has  become  some- 
thing like  a  republic.  The  British  empire  is  moving  towards 
closer  federation.  The  Grand  Alliance  called  into  existence  by 
the  German  aggression  is  now  something  more  than  a  military 
coalition.  Common  ideals  are  working  through  it — ideals  of 
local  autonomy  and  joint  action.  Men  are  crying  that  they  must 
be  free  and  that  they  must  be  united.  They  have  learned  that 
they  cannot  be  free  unless  they  cooperate,  that  they  cannot 
cooperate  unless  they  are  free. 

I  do  net  wish  to  underestimate  the  forces  of  reaction  in  our 
country  or  in  the  other  nations  of  the  Alliance.  There  are  politi- 
cians and  commercial  groups  who  see  in  this  whole  thing  nothing 
but  opportunity  to  secure  concessions,  manipulate  tariffs  and 
extend  the  bureaucracies.  We  shall  know  how  to  deal  with  them. 
Forces  have  been  let  loose  which  they  can  no  longer  control,  and 
out  of  this  immense  horror  ideas  have  arisen  to  possess  men's 
souls.  There  are  times  when  a  prudent  statesman  must  build  on  a 
contracted  view  of  human  nature.  But  there  are  times  when  new 
sources  of  energy  are  tapped,  when  the  impossible  becomes 


348  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

possible,  when  events  outrun  our  calculations.  This  may  be  such 
a  time.  The  Alliance  to  which  we  belong  has  suddenly  grown  hot 
with  the  new  democracy  of  Russia  and  the  new  internationalism 
of  America.  It  has  had  an  access  of  spiritual  force  which  opens 
a  new  prospect  in  the  policies  of  the  world.  We  can  dare  to 
hope  for  things  which  we  never  dared  to  hope  for  in  the  past. 
In  fact  if  those  forces  are  not  to  grow  cold  and  frittered  they 
must  be  turned  to  a  great  end  and  offered  a  great  hope. 

IV 

That  great  end  and  that  great  hope  is  nothing  less  than  the 
Federation  of  the  World.  I  know  it  sounds  a  little  old-fashioned 
to  use  that  phrase  because  we  have  abused  it  so  long  in  empty 
rhetoric.  But  no  other  idea  is  big  enough  to  describe  the  alliance. 
It  is  no  longer  an  offensive-defensive  military  agreement  among 
diplomats.  That  is  how  it  started,  to  be  sure.  But  it  has  grown, 
and  is  growing,  into  a  union  of  peoples  determined  to  end  forever 
that  intriguing,  adventurous  nationalism  which  has  torn  the 
world  for  three  centuries.  Good  democrats  have  always  believed 
that  the  common  interests  of  men  were  greater  than  their  special 
interests,  that  ruling  classes  can  be  enemies,  but  that  the  nations 
must  be  partners.  Well,  this  war  is  being  fought  by  nations.  It 
is  the  nations  who  were  called  to  arms,  and  it  is  the  force  of 
nations  that  is  now  stirring  the  world  to  its  foundations. 

The  war  is  dissolving  into  a  stupendous  revolution.  A  few 
months  ago  we  still  argued  about  the  Bagdad  corridor,  strategic 
frontiers,  colonies.  Those  were  the  stakes  of  the  diplomat's  war. 
The  whole  perspective  is  changed  today  by  the  revolution  in 
Russia  and  the  intervention  of  America.  The  scale  of  values  is 
transformed,  for  the  democracies  are  unloosed.  Those  democ- 
racies have  nothing  to  gain  and  everything  to  lose  by  the  old 
competitive  nationalism,  the  old  apparatus  of  diplomacy,  with 
its  criminal  rivalries  in  the  backward  places  of  the  earth.  The 
democracies,  if  they  are  to  be  safe,  must  cooperate.  For  the  old 
rivalries  mean  friction  and  armament  and  a  distortion  of  all 
the  hopes  of  free  government.  They  mean  that  nations  are 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  349 

organized  to  exploit  each  other  and  to  exploit  themselves.  That 
is  the  life  of  what  we  call  autocracy.  It  establishes  its  power  at 
home  by  pointing  to  enemies  abroad.  It  fights  its  enemies 
abroad  by  dragooning  the  population  at  home. 

That  is  why  practically  the  whole  world  is  at  war  with  the 
greatest  of  the  autocracies.  That  is  why  the  whole  world  is  turn- 
ing so  passionately  towards  democracy  as  the  only  principle  on 
which  peace  can  be  secured.  Many  have  feared,  I  know,  that  the 
war  against  Prussian  militarism  would  result  the  other  way,  that 
instead  of  liberalizing  Prussia  the  outcome  would  be  a  Prussian- 
ization  of  the  democracies.  That  would  be  the  outcome  if  Prusso- 
Germany  won.  That  would  be  the  result  of  a  German  victory. 
And  that  is  why  we  who  are  the  most  peaceful  of  democracies  are 
at  war.  The  success  of  the  submarine  would  give  Germany 
victory.  It  was  and  is  her  one  great  chance.  To  have  stood  aside 
when  Germany  made  this  terrible  bid  for  victory  would  have 
been  to  betray  the  hope  of  free  government  and  international 
union. 


There  are  two  ways  now  in  which  peace  can  be  made.  The 
first  is  by  political  revolution  in  Germany  and  Austria-Hungary. 
It  is  not  for  us  to  define  the  nature  of  that  revolution.  We  can- 
not dictate  liberty  to  the  German  people.  It  is  for  them  to  decide 
what  political  institutions  they  will  adopt,  but  if  peace  is  to  come 
through  revolution  we  shall  know  that  it  has  come  when  new 
voices  are  heard  in  Germany,  new  policies  are  proclaimed,  when 
there  is  good  evidence  that  there  has,  indeed,  been  a  new  orienta- 
tion. If  that  is  done  the  war  can  be  ended  by  negotiation. 

The  other  path  to  peace  is  by  the  definite  defeat  of  every  item 
in  the  program  of  aggression.  This  will  mean,  at  a  minimum,  a 
demonstration  on  the  field  that  the  German  army  is  not  invin- 
cible; a  renunciation  by  Germany  of  all  the  territory  she  has  con- 
quered; a  special  compensation  to  Belgium;  and  an  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  fallacy  of  exclusive  nationalism  by  an  application  for 
membership  in  the  League  of  Nations. 

Frontier  questions,  colonial  questions,  are  now  entirely  sec- 


3So  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

ondary,  and  beyond  this  minimum  program  the  United  States 
has  no  direct  interest  in  the  territorial  settlement.  The  objects 
for  which  we  are  at  war  will  be  attained  if  we  can  defeat  abso- 
lutely the  foreign  policy  of  the  present  German  government.  For 
a  ruling  caste  which  has  been  humiliated  abroad  has  lost  its 
glamor  at  home.  So  we  are  at  war  to  defeat  the  German  govern- 
ment in  the  outer  world,  to  destroy  its  prestige,  to  deny  its 
conquests,  and  to  throw  it  back  at  last  into  the  arms  of  the  Ger- 
man people  marked  and  discredited  as  the  author  of  their  mis- 
eries. It  is  for  them  to  make  the  final  settlement  with  it. 

If  it  is  our  privilege  to  exert  the  power  which  turns  the  scale, 
it  is  our  duty  to  see  that  the  end  justifies  the  means.  We  can  win 
nothing  from  this  war  unless  it  culminates  in  a  union  of  liberal 
peoples  pledged  to  cooperate  in  the  settlement  of  all  outstanding 
questions,  sworn  to  turn  against  the  aggressor,  determined  to 
erect  a  larger  and  more  modern  system  of  international  law  upon 
a  federation  of  the  world.  That  is  what  we  are  fighting  for,  at 
this  moment,  on  the  ocean,  in  the  shipyard  and  hi  the  factory, 
later  perhaps  in  France  and  Belgium,  ultimately  at  the  council  of 
peace. 

If  we  are  strong  enough  and  wise  enough  to  win  this  victory, 
to  reject  all  the  poison  of  hatred  abroad  and  intolerance  at  home, 
we  shall  have  made  a  nation  to  which  free  men  will  turn  with  love 
and  gratitude.  For  ourselves  we  shall  stand  committed  as  never 
before  to  the  realization  of  democracy  in  America.  We  who  have 
gone  to  war  to  insure  democracy  in  the  world  will  have  raised  an 
aspiration  here  that  will  not  end  with  the  overthrow  of  the 
Prussian  autocracy.  We  shall  turn  with  fresh  interests  to  our 
own  tyrannies — to  our  Colorado  mines,  our  autocratic  steel 
industries,  our  sweatshops  and  our  slums.  We  shall  call  that  man 
un-American  and  no  patriot  who  prates  of  liberty  in  Europe  and 
resists  it  at  home.  A  force  is  loose  in  America  as  well.  Our  own 
reactionaries  will  not  assuage  it  with  their  Billy  Sundays  or 
control  through  lawyers  and  politicians  of  the  Old  Guard. 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  351 

AMERICAN  AND  ALLIED  IDEALS1 

STUART  PRATT  SHERMAN 

[Stuart  Pratt  Sherman  (1881 )  was  born  at  Anita,  Iowa.    After 

graduating  at  Williams  College,  he  studied  at  Harvard,  and  became,  in 
1906,  an  instructor  in  English  in  the  Northwestern  University.  In  the  fol- 
lowing year  he  went  to  the  University  of  Illinois  where  he  is  now  professor 
of  English.  In  his  writings,  especially  in  the  field  of  literary  criticism,  he 
has  shown  himself  one  of  the  most  brilliant  of  the  younger  men  of  letters 
in  the  United  States.] 

I  have  heard  one  of  our  prophets  declaring  that  either  Ger- 
many or  America  is  destined  to  rule  the  world,  and  that  on  the 
whole  he  hopes  it  will  be  America.  If  I  may  speak  out  of  my 
own  convictions,  there  is  one  thing  more  abhorrent  to  my  con- 
science than  that  Germany  should  dominate  the  world  by  force 
of  arms.  That  one  more  abhorrent  thing  is  that  America  should 
dominate  the  world  by  force  of  arms.  When  a  man  execrates 
on  the  part  of  a  foreign  nation  a  course  which  he  praises  on  the 
part  of  his  own  nation;  when  a  man  curses  Germany  because  it 
is  militaristic  and  then  rebukes  America  because  it  is  not  mili- 
taristic; when  a  man  reviles  the  Germans  for  crying,  "On  to 
Calais"  and  then  turns  to  his  fellow  countrymen  crying,  "On  to 
Panama;"  when  a  man  ridicules  the  Germans  for  calling  them- 
selves God's  chosen  people,  and  then  turns  to  the  Americans 
and  calls  them  God's  chosen  people;  when  a  man  upbraids  the 
Germans  for  shouting  right  or  wrong  my  country,  and  then 
turns  to  the  Americans  shouting  right  or  wrong  my  country — 
confronted  by  this  bull-headed  preposterous  nationalism  the 
experienced  Muse  of  history  bursts  into  scornful  laughter;  he 
that  sitteth  in  the  heavens  turns  away  his  face;  and  Americans 
in  the  midst  of  this  horrible  slaughter  are  properly  admonished 
to  prepare  for  the  next  war ! 

Nor  can  we  escape  from  the  derisive  laughter  of  the  Immortals 
by  talking  about  the  Anglo-Saxons.  Only  one  degree  removed 
from  the  preposterous  nationalist  is  the  preposterous  Anglo- 

'From  American  and  Allied  Ideals.  (No.  12,  War  Information  Series,  February,  1918, 
issued  by  the  Committee  on  Public  Information.)  Reprinted  by  permission. 


352  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

Saxon.  I  feel  fairly  intimate  with  the  ideals  of  America;  they 
are  mine.  I  know  something  of  the  ideals  of  England;  they  are 
allied  to  America's.  But  what  are  the  Anglo-Saxon  ideals?  Do 
they  include  Disraeli's,  Mr.  Lloyd-George's,  or  Mr.  Wilson's? 
For  that  matter,  who  are  the  Anglo-Saxons — other  than  those 
Germanic  tribes  that  drove  back  the  Celtic  and  Pictish  ancestors 
of  our  Scotch-Irish  presidents?  I  do  not  see  how  the  American 
scholar's  sympathies  can  be  strongly  enlisted  in  a  feud  in  behalf 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  blood.  What  stake  have  the  countrymen  of 
Lafayette  in  a  blood  feud  of  the  Anglo-Saxons?  Or  the  country- 
men of  Garibaldi?  Or  the  countrymen  of  Kerensky?  Or  the 
Japanese?  Or  the  Brazilians?  Or  the  Portuguese?  Or  the 
people  of  China  and  Siam?  The  ties  of  blood  and  race  count  for 
next  to  nothing  in  this  conflict.  The  English-speaking  peoples 
have  no  monopoly  in  the  ideals  of  the  Allies.  The  American 
who  now  raises  the  flag  of  Anglo-Saxonism  raises  a  meaningless 
symbol  which  insults  the  pride  of  millions  of  his  fellow  country- 
men and  most  of  the  Allies,  and  may  well  challenge  the  Orient 
to  muster  and  drill  her  millions  for  the  next  war. 

Appeals  to  race  prejudice,  to  a  purely  self-regarding  patriot- 
ism, to  the  old-fashioned  nationalism,  happily  do  not  nowadays 
always  carry  conviction  to  the  intellectual  class  to  which  edu- 
cated men  are  alleged  to  belong.  Many  of  them  have  banished 
race  prejudice  as  a  relic  of  tribal  days.  Many  of  them  are  con- 
vinced that  national  pride  needs  a  schoolmaster;  and  are  glad 
that  it  has  one !  They  have  studied  the  world  upheaval  in  which 
the  nations  now  quake;  they  have  searchingly  scrutinized  their 
own  consciences;  and  many  of  them  have  reached  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  master  cause  of  this  tragedy,  of  which  all  the  world's 
the  stage,  is  precisely  the  old  self-regarding  nationalism — the 
nationalism  which  glorifies  power  and  has  no  principle  of  con- 
traction to  oppose  to  its  principle  of  expansion.  When  they 
hear  Germans  shouting  "Deutschland  uber  Alles,"  and  Americans 
shouting  "America  uber  Alles,"  their  hearts  refuse  to  rally  to 
either  call. 

They  say  that  the  only  way  to  avoid  brutal  and  hideous 
clashes  of  international  strife  for  national  expansion  is  to  stop 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  353 

this  barbaric  shouting;  and  to  set  up  and  establish  supernational 
ideals  and  principles  which  shall  impose  an  effective  check  upon 
the  indefinitely  expansive  principle  of  nationality.  Some  of  our 
statesmen  tell  us  that  it  cannot  be  done.  They  declare  that 
they  are  too  stupid  to  contrive  the  machinery  of  international 
government.  We  do  not  altogether  believe  them.  We  have  a 
very  great  confidence  in  both  the  ingenuity  and  the  power  of 
statesmen;  and  it  is  based  upon  experience.  We  believe  that 
statesmen  can  do  anything  that  they  have  a  mind  to  do.  We 
believe  in  the  ingenuity  and  power  of  statesmen,  because  we  see 
them  all  around  the  world  accomplishing  much  more  difficult 
and  incredible  things,  such,  for  example,  as  persuading  great 
nations  to  pledge  their  last  dollar  and  their  last  man  and  to 
walk  through  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  hideous  death  to  sup- 
port a  statesman's  word,  plighted  perhaps  without  their  knowl- 
edge or  consent.  From  that  spectacle  we  derive  our  belief  that 
when  statesmen  heartily  apply  their  ingenuity  to  contriving 
what  the  hearts  of  all  the  plain  people  of  the  world  desire,  they 
will  be  not  a  little  surprised  to  discover  the  easiness  of  the  task 
and  the  inexhaustible  power  behind  them. 

Where  shall  we  find  the  supernational  principles  and  powers 
which  we  wish  our  statesmen  to  establish,  which  we  demand 
that  they  shall  establish?  We  shall  find  them  in  the  cause  for 
which  America  and  her  associates  are  now  fighting.  Cynics 
may  say  that  each  of  the  Allies  is  fighting  for  its  own  special 
interest,  its  own  peculiar  culture,  its  trade,  to  recover  this  or  that 
bit  of  territory,  to  annex  this  or  that  province  or  port.  Doubt- 
less selfish  motives  do  enter  to  some  extent  into  the  practical 
considerations  of  most  of  the  governments,  just  as  brutal  and 
selfish  men  enter  into  the  armies.  But  unless  the  leading  spokes- 
men of  the  Allies  are  black-hearted  liars,  they  are  about  a 
nobler  business  than  national  buccaneering.  And  whatever  the 
governments  are  about,  we  are  profoundly  convinced  that  the 
great  mass  of  the  people  of  the  Allies  are  not  cynics  and  do  not 
intend  to  be  dupes;  that  they  are  not  fighting  for  ports  and  prov- 
inces and  trade;  that  they  are  fighting  for  the  common  interests 
of  the  whole  family  of  civilized  nations — for  nothing  less  than 
w 


354  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

the  cause  of  mankind.  They  can  unite  from  the  ends  of  the 
earth  as  one  people,  sinking  their  national  peculiarities,  because 
they  are  drawn  by  a  bond  deeper  than  language  or  nationality 
or  race;  they  are  drawn  by  the  bond  that  unites  the  common- 
wealth of  nations.  They  are  not  fighting  for  French  or  English 
or  American  law,  justice,  truth,  and  honor,  but  for  international 
law,  international  truth,  international  justice,  international  honor. 

The  new  national  pride  and  patriotism  developed  by  this 
conflict  finds  its  basis  in  the  service  which  each  nation  renders 
to  the  cause  above  all  nations,  the  cause  of  civilized  society,  the 
cause  of  civilized  man.  The  new  type  of  patriot  no  longer  cries, 
"my  country  against  the  world,"  but  "my  country  for  the  world." 
The  moment  that  he  takes  that  attitude  he  finds  no  more  hos- 
tility between  the  idea  of  nationalism  and  the  idea  of  inter- 
nationalism than  between  the  idea  of  a  company  and  the  idea 
of  a  regiment,  or  the  idea  of  a  state  and  the  idea  of  a  nation. 
As  each  good  citizen's  loyalty  to  his  state  accepts  a  principle  of 
control  in  his  loyalty  to  his  nation,  so  his  loyalty  to  his  nation 
accepts  a  principle  of  control  in  his  loyalty  to  the  general  family 
of  nations. 

Here  is  the  great  fact  which  challenges  the  loyalty  of  every 
humane  man.  Propaganda  for  America  and  the  Allies  is  not  to 
be  urged  to  the  disadvantage  of  any  nation  whatsoever,  pro- 
vided only  that  each  nation  is  willing  to  behave  like  a  member  of 
a  family  of  nations,  provided  only  that  it  will  accept  for  its  con- 
duct outside  its  borders  the  fundamental  principles  of  civiliza- 
tion. Our  propaganda  is  not  for  separatism  and  exclusion.  It 
is  rather  our  profound  conviction  that  there  is  no  room  left  in 
the  world  for  barbarians,  for  heathen  tribes  without  the  law. 
Humanity  is  not  safe  while  any  nation  professes  inhumanity. 
We  are  not  fighting  to  put  the  Germans  out  but  to  get  them  in. 
Furthermore  we  have  got  to  take  the  Orient  in,  frankly  and 
fully;  or  in  all  probability  we  or  our  children,  or  our  children's 
children,  will  have  to  fight  the  Orient.  To  some  of  us  the  in- 
fluence upon  the  Orient  of  the  German  rebellion  against  the 
Family  of  Nations  appears  as  not  the  least  ominous  and  dreadful 
aspect  of  the  present  war. 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  355 

If  out  of  the  infinite  travail  of  this  war  there  is  to  come  a  new 
birth  of  national  freedom  under  international  law,  if  these  our 
numberless  dead  are  not  to  have  died  in  vain,  we  must  keep  our 
great  war  aims  ever  vividly  before  us.  We  must  not  merely 
defeat  our  adversaries  but  also  establish  the  principles  for  which 
we  drew  the  sword.  If  in  the  day  of  victory  the  apathy  of  en- 
lightened men  permits  reactionaries  and  old-fashioned  statesmen 
to  arrange  a  peace  under  which  the  nations  revert  to  the  former 
state  of  international  anarchy  and  competitive  preparations  for 
fresh  conflicts,  the  spirits  of  millions  of  bemocked  and  victimized 
young  dead  men  should  rise  from  their  graves  to  protest  against 
the  great  betrayal.  To  insure  that  the  war  shall  end  as  a  purg- 
ing tragedy  and  not  as  an  empty  farce  we  need  now  and  shall 
need  for  a  long  time  to  come  impassioned  expositors  of  the  laws 
of  man  and  God,  profaned  by  the  enemy  and  defended  by 
America  and  the  Allies. 

The  first  duty  of  the  propagandist  is  to  determine  what  the 
ideals  and  principles  of  the  Allies  are;  and  this  involves  deter- 
mining what  they  are  not.  One  can  best  discover  what  they 
are  not  by  reading  modern  German  literature,  German  news- 
papers, German  ethics  and  politics,  the  works  of  Schopenhauer, 
Nietzsche,  Treitschke,  Bernhardi,  Hartmann,  etc.  If  time  is 
short,  one  can  quickly  sharpen  one's  consciousness  of  what  our 
ideals  are  not  by  reading  daily  one  or  two  selections  from  an 
anthology  of  German  thought,  such  as  is  contained  in  Conquest 
and  Kultur,  published  by  the  Committee  on  Public  Information. 
In  this  literature  one  will  make  acquaintance  with  the  Kaiser's 
tribal  god  who  has  merited  the  iron  cross  for  his  able  support  of 
the  strategy  of  the  German  General  Staff,  the  god  who  is  to 
stand  arm  in  arm  with  the  Kaiser  reviewing  his  Uhlans  on  the 
Day  of  Judgment.  There  one  will  find  the  leaders  of  German 
thought  deifying  a  state  with  no  aspect  of  deity  but  power; 
denying  the  right  of  small  nations  to  live;  reviving  old  and  in- 
stituting new  forms  of  slavery;  affirming  that  might  is  right; 
defending  the  ravishment  of  Belgium;  rejoicing  in  the  Lusitania 
massacre;  glorifying  Schrecklichkeit;  recommending  that  ships  of 
friendly  neutrals  should  be  spurlos  versenkt;  advocating  keeping 


356  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

subject  peoples  in  ignorance  and  misery;  chanting  the  holiness  of 
war  and  hoping  that  it  may  last  forever;  extolling  war  as  the 
prime  element  of  their  Kultur;  and  proudly  declaring  their 
opposition  to  the  establishment  on  earth  of  the  kingdom  of 
righteousness  and  peace.  There  one  will  find  the  ideals  and 
principles  of  a  government  which  has  covenanted  with  death 
and  agreed  with  hell. 

The  propagandist  can  do  good  service  by  holding  these  ideas 
up  to  execration,  not  because  they  are  German  ideas  but  because 
they  are  ideas  hostile  to  the  commonwealth  of  man.  And  if  by 
chance  any  spokesman  of  the  Allied  nations  falls  into  the  error 
of  saying  anything  resembling  these  ideas,  the  propagandist 
may  perform  equally  good  service  by  pointing  out  with  emphasis 
that  he  speaks  like  one  of  the  depraved  leaders  of  German 
thought  and  an  enemy  of  the  Allies. 

His  happiest  occupation,  however,  should  be  the  discovery, 
collection,  and  enthusiastic  promulgation  on  every  proffered 
occasion  of  the  ideals  of  the  Allies.  This  kind  of  propaganda 
has  not  yet  received  the  attention  it  deserves.  The  tendency 
has  been  to  expose  the  perversity  and  iniquity  of  the  enemy's 
aims  and  to  take  for  granted  the  righteousness  and  justice  of 
our  own.  As  the  war  proceeds,  the  Allied  nations  are  steadily 
drawn  by  necessity  to  fight  fire  with  fire;  to  parry  the  blow  of  an 
autocratic  government,  they  have  had  to  make  their  own  gov- 
ernments temporarily  autocratic;  to  meet  the  rush  of  a  nation 
in  arms,  they  have  had  to  put  their  own  nations  in  arms;  to 
resist  the  assault  of  a  people  trained  to  sacrifice  all  to  the  state, 
they  have  been  compelled  for  the  nonce  to  demand  a  similar 
sacrifice.  As  all  the  participants  in  this  dreadful  melee  become 
more  and  more  deeply  imbrued  in  the  blood  and  wrath  of  com- 
bat, it  grows  increasingly  difficult  to  distinguish  by  their  ex- 
ternal aspects  the  victim  from  the  assassin.  This  hour  when 
his  hands  are  subdued  to  the  dark  color  of  the  bleeding  mire 
wherein  he  grapples  with  the  foe  is  the  bitter  hour  for  the  idealist. 
It  is  the  hour  of  sinister  opportunity  for  the  man  who  builds  his 
philosophy  upon  the  incorrigible  baseness  of  our  human  natures. 
It  is  then  that  the  cynic  and  the  reactionary  croak  and  shout: 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  357 

"You  are  all  tarred  with  the  same  brush.  We  bet  on  the  black- 
est. Fall  to!  and  the  devil  take  the  hindmost."  This  is  the 
hour  when  it  tremendously  concerns  us  to  be  reminded  who 
began  the  war  and  what  it  is  about.  This  is  the  hour  when  it 
behooves  us  to  remember  that  our  soldiers  are  defending  the 
causes  which  our  statesmen  define.  It  is  the  business  of  the 
strategists  of  international  idealism  to  demand  that  the  armies 
of  the  Allies  shall  never  fight  for  a  cause  unworthy  of  the  com- 
monwealth of  man. 

Where  shall  we  look  for  the  ideals  of  the  Allies?  Primarily, 
perhaps,  in  the  utterances  of  the  Allied  statesmen  at  the  present 
time  and  in  the  vast  literature  of  the  conflict.  Take,  if  you  like, 
Siam's  statement  of  its  reasons  for  entering  the  war,  to  "uphold 
the  sanctity  of  international  rights  against  nations  showing  a 
contempt  of  humanity."  Or  take  Mr.  Wilson's  statement  that 
our  motive  is  not  "revenge  or  the  victorious  assertion  of  the 
physical  might  of  the  nation,  but  only  the  vindication  of  right, 
of  human  right,  of  which  we  are  only  a  single  champion;"  or 
his  other  statement  that  we  fight  "for  a  universal  dominion 
of  right  by  such  a  concert  of  free  peoples  as  shall  bring  peace 
and  safety  to  all  nations  and  make  the  world  itself  at  last  free." 

It  should  be  a  great  source  of  inspiration  and  confidence  to 
recognize  that  the  ideals  of  the  Allies  have  been  the  ideals  of 
just  men  in  all  ages;  so  that  we  may  find  them,  most  of  them, 
expressed  in  all  the  great  literatures  of  the  world,  ancient  and 
modern,  including  the  literature  of  the  great  Germans  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Contemporary  German  thought  is  pre- 
historic, reversionary,  paradoxical.  It  seeks  to  fly  against  the 
great  winds  of  time,  to  row  against  the  deep  current  of  human 
purposes,  to  ignore  the  grand  agreements  of  civilized  men,  and 
to  seek  its  sanction  in  the  unconscious  law  of  the  jungle.  The 
Allies  are  seeking  to  cooperate  with  the  power  not  ourselves 
which  has  been  struggling  for  righteousness  through  the  entire 
history  of  man;  and  their  cause  will  be  borne  forward  by  the 
confluent  moral  energies  of  all  times  and  peoples. 

It  was  to  Goethe  that  Arnold  generously  gave  credit  for  the 
idea  of  an  international  republic  of  intellectual  men,  an  idea 


358  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

precious  to  every  scholar  and  man  of  letters.  "Let  us  conceive," 
said  Arnold,  "of  the  whole  group  of  civilized  nations  as  being, 
for  intellectual  and  spiritual  purposes,  one  great  confederation 
whose  members  have  a  due  knowledge  both  of  the  past  out  of 
which  they  all  proceed,  and  of  one  another.  This  was  the  idea 
of  Goethe,  and  it  is  an  ideal  which  will  impose  itself  upon  the 
thoughts  of  our  modern  societies  more  and  more."  It  was 
Goethe  who  said:  "National  hatred  is  something  peculiar.  You 
will  always  find  it  strongest  where  there  is  the  lowest  degree  of 
culture.  And  there  is  a  degree  where  it  vanishes  altogether 
and  where  one  stands  to  a  certain  extent  above  nations."  These 
are  ideals  of  the  Allies,  now  scoffed  at  by  the  depraved  leaders 
of  the  thought  of  Goethe's  countrymen. 

Mr.  Roosevelt  has  discovered  the  cause  of  the  Allies  in  the 
words  of  Micah:  "What  more  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee 
than  to  do  justice  and  love  mercy  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy 
God?"  Another  of  the  Prophets,  as  if  foreseeing  the  advice 
given  by  the  German  General  Staff  to  the  God  of  the  German 
armies,  expressed  an  ideal  of  the  Allies  when  he  said:  "Who  hath 
directed  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord,  or  being  his  Counsellor  hath 
taught  him?  .  .  .  Behold,  the  nations  are  as  a  drop  of  a 
bucket,  and  are  counted  as  the  small  dust  of  the  balance.  .  .  . 
All  nations  before  Him  are  as  nothing;  and  they  are  counted  to 
Him  less  than  nothing  and  vanity.  .  .  .  [When  His  spirit 
is  poured  from  on  high]  judgment  shall  dwell  in  the  wilderness, 
and  righteousness  remain  in  the  fruitful  field.  And  the  work  of 
righteousness  shall  be  peace;  and  the  effect  of  righteousness,  quiet- 
ness and  assurance  forever" 

Confucius  expressed  an  ideal  of  the  Allies,  very  dear  to  the 
heart  of  all  Americans,  when  he  said:  "People  despotically 
governed  and  kept  in  order  by  punishment  may  avoid  infrac- 
tion of  the  law,  but  they  will  lose  their  moral  sense.  People 
virtuously  governed  and  kept  in  order  by  the  inner  law  of  self- 
control  will  retain  their  moral  sense,  and  moreover  become 
good." 

Cicero  expressed  a  majestic  ideal  of  the  Allies,  when  he  said: 
"True  law  is  right  reason  conformable  to  nature,  universal, 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  359 

unchangeable,  eternal,  whose  commands  urge  us  to  duty,  and 
whose  prohibitions  restrain  us  from  evil.  .  .  .  Neither  the 
senate  nor  the  people  can  give  us  any  dispensation  for  not  obey- 
ing this  universal  law  of  justice.  ...  It  is  not  one  thing  at 
Rome,  and  another  at  Athens;  one  thing  today,  and  another 
tomorrow;  but  in  all  times  and  nations  this  universal  law  must 
forever  reign,  eternal  and  imperishable.  It  is  the  sovereign 
master  and  emperor  of  all  things.  God  himself  is  its  author, 
its  promulgator,  its  enforcer.  And  he  who  does  not  obey  it 
flies  from  himself,  and  does  violence  to  the  very  nature  of 
man." 

English  literature,  especially  since  the  seventeenth  century 
when  the  divine  right  of  kings  received  its  death  blow,  is  full  of 
expressions  of  Allied  ideals.  Milton  implies  one  in  Paradise 
Regained 

"They  err  who  count  it  glorious  to  subdue 
By  conquest  far  and  wide,  to  overrun 
Large  countries,  and  in  field  great  battles  win, 
Great  cities  by  assault;  what  do  these  worthies 
But  rob  and  spoil,  burn,  slaughter,  and  enslave 
Peaceable  nations,  neighboring  or  remote 
Made  captive,  yet  deserving  freedom  more 
Than  those  their  conquerors,  who  leave  behind 
Nothing  but  ruin  wheresoe'er  they  rove 
And  all  the  flourishing  works  of  peace  destroy."* 

And  Milton  expresses  an  ideal  of  the  Allies  for  the  period  follow- 
ing the  war:  "If  after  being  released  from  the  toils  of  war,  you 
neglect  the  arts  of  peace  ...  if  you  think  it  is  a  more  grand, 
or  a  more  beneficial,  or  a  more  wise  policy,  to  invent  subtle 
expedients  for  increasing  the  revenue,  to  multiply  our  naval 
and  military  force,  to  rival  in  craft  the  ambassadors  of  foreign 
states,  to  form  skillful  treaties  and  alliances,  than  to  administer 
unpolluted  justice  to  the  people,  to  redress  the  injured,  to  suc- 
cor the  distressed,  and  speedily  to  restore  to  every  one  his  own, 
you  are  involved  in  a  cloud  of  error,  and  too  late  you  will  per- 
ceive, when  the  illusion  of  those  mighty  benefits  has  vanished, 

*Quoted  by  E.  de  SSlincourt  in  Enilish  Poets  and  the  National  Ideal.  [Shermt  n's 
•ote.] 


36o  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

that  in  neglecting  these,  you  have  only  been  precipitating  your 
own  ruin  and  despair." 

The  literature  of  France,  especially  since  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, is  full  of  the  ideals  of  the  Allies.  For  France  I  will  quote  a 
few  lines  from  the  essay  by  Victor  Giraud  on  French  civiliza- 
tion, recently  published  in  this  country  by  the  Department  of 
Romance  Languages  of  the  University  of  Michigan: 

"France  has  never  been  able  to  believe  that  force  alone,  the 
force  of  pride  and  brute  strength,  could  be  the  last  word  hi  the 
affairs  of  this  world.  She  has  never  admitted  that  science  could 
have  for  its  ultimate  purpose  to  multiply  the  means  of  destruc- 
tion and  oppression,  and  it  was  one  of  her  old  writers,  Rabelais, 
who  pronounced  these  memorable  words:  'Science  without  con- 
science is  the  ruin  of  the  soul.'  She  has  not  been  able  to  con- 
ceive that  an  ethnic  group,  a  particular  type  of  mind,  should 
have  the  right  to  suppress  others:  instead  of  a  rigid  and  mechani- 
cal uniformity  of  thought  and  life,  the  ideal  to  which  she  aspires 
is  that  of  the  free  play,  spontaneous  development,  and  the  living 
harmony  of  the  nations  of  the  world." 

In  the  response  of  the  South  American  states  to  the  appeal  of 
the  cause  of  the  Allies,  deep  has  called  unto  deep.  No  novel 
circumstance,  no  momentary  impulse,  no  revelation  of  yesterday 
has  revealed  to  the  Latin-American  peoples  their  essential  com- 
munity of  interest  with  France,  with  England,  with  the  United 
States  of  the  North.  Through  all  temporary  misunderstandings 
and  estrangements,  they  have  remembered  that  they  are  kindred 
offspring  of  one  great  emancipative  idea,  inheritors  of  a  common 
political  purpose,  pilgrims  to  a  common  goal.  Through  the  con- 
fusions of  desperate  wars  Simon  Bolivar,  the  Washington  of  their 
revolutions,  led  them  a  hundred  years  ago  to  the  threshold  of 
the  new  world  of  national  independence,  civic  equality,  liberty, 
popular  sovereignty  and  justice.  He,  man  of  strife  though  he 
had  to  be,  cherished  lifelong  his  fond  dream  of  a  parliament  of 
man,  and  in  the  evening  of  his  life  summoned  on  the  Isthmus 
of  Panama  a  congress  of  nations,  which  he  intended  should 
present  a  united  front  to  imperial  aggression,  become  the  per- 
petual source  and  guarantor  of  public  law,  and  establish  concord 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  361 

among  all  peace-loving  peoples.  From  that  day  to  this  the 
statesmen  of  South  America  have  been  with  increasing  earnest- 
ness and  effectiveness  the  friends  of  arbitral  justice  and  the 
architects  of  international  peace. 

What  shah1 1  say  of  America  but  that  the  ideals  for  which  the 
Allies  are  now  every  day  more  consciously  fighting  presided  over 
her  birth  as  a  nation  and  have  been  her  guiding  stars  in  all  the 
high  moments  of  her  history?  I  mean  that  the  American  nation, 
established  at  an  epoch  of  intellectual  expansion,  was  to  a  re- 
markable degree  founded  upon  international  principles  by  men 
of  international  outlook  and  sympathies.  Our  founders  in 
general  claimed  nothing  for  Americans  but  what  they  were  will- 
ing and  anxious  to  concede  to  all  men;  so  that  it  has  ever  been  a 
splendid  tradition  of  the  American  Government,  when  about  to 
take  a  momentous  step,  frankly  to  state  its  case,  and  openly  to 
invite  the  considerate  judgment — not  of  Americans — but  of 
mankind,  thus  checking  the  expansive  principle  of  nationalism 
by  the  contractive  principle  of  a  supernational  allegiance. 

America,  furthermore,  has  never  established  the  worship  of  a 
tribal  or  national  deity.  The  God  invoked  by  the  framers  of 
our  Declaration  of  Independence,  our  Constitution,  our  Con- 
gress, our  Courts,  and  by  our  great  presidents,  has  quite  obvi- 
ously, I  think,  been  approached  as  the  Father  of  Mankind. 
The  eighteenth  century  deists — men  like  Paine,  Franklin,  and 
Jefferson — had  indeed  thoroughly  repudiated  the  idea  of  a 
warlike  tribal  Jehovah;  the  qualities  which  they  habitually 
attributed  to  the  deity  were  justice  and  benevolence;  and  these 
characteristics  have  remained,  I  believe,  the  leading  ones  in 
what  we  may  call  our  national  conceptions  of  divinity.  And 
how  has  our  national  faith  in  a  Father  of  all  Mankind  been  re- 
flected in  our  political  conceptions?  Well,  Benjamin  Franklin 
said  in  the  midst  of  a  great  war:  "Justice  is  as  strictly  due 
between  neighbour  Nations  as  between  neighbour  citizens 
.  .  .  and  a  Nation  which  makes  an  unjust  war  is  only  a  great 
Gang."  And  our  Declaration  of  Independence  holds  that  the 
God  of  nature  has  made  it  self-evident  that  all  men  are  created 
equal  and  endowed  with  inalienable  rights  to  life,  liberty,  and 


362  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

the  pursuit  of  happiness.  Washington,  in  his  "Farewell  Address," 
expresses  his  faith  that  Providence  has  connected  the  permanent 
felicity  of  a  nation  with  its  virtue;  accordingly  he  urges  his 
countrymen  to  forego  temporary  national  advantages,  and  to 
try  the  novel  experiment  of  always  acting  nationally  on  princi- 
ples of  "exalted  justice  and  benevolence."  Jefferson,  in  his  first 
inaugural,  felicitates  his  countrymen  on  the  fact  that  religion 
in  America,  under  all  its  various  forms,  inculcates  "honesty, 
truth,  temperance,  gratitude,  and  the  love  of  man."  Liberty, 
equality,  justice,  benevolence,  truth — these  are  not  tribal  ideals. 

All  these  ideals  which  our  national  fathers  derived  from  the 
Father  of  all  Nations,  Lincoln  received  and  cherished  as  a  sacred 
heritage,  and  he  added  something  precious  to  them.  He  took 
them  into  his  great  heart  and  quickened  them  with  his  own  warm 
sense  of  human  brotherhood,  with  his  instinctive  gentleness  and 
compassion  for  all  the  children  of  men.  "With  malice  towards 
none;  with  charity  for  all;  with  firmness  for  the  right,  as  God 
gives  us  to  see  the  right,  let  us  strive  on  to  finish  the  work  we 
are  in;  to  bind  up  the  nation's  wounds;  to  care  for  him  who  shall 
have  borne  the  battle,  and  for  his  widow,  and  his  orphan — to 
do  all  which  may  achieve  and  cherish  a  just  and  lasting  peace 
among  ourselves,  and  with  all  nations."  Why  do  these  words, 
uttered  near  the  bitter  end  of  a  long  war,  touch  us  so  deeply, 
and  thrill  us  year  after  year?  Because  in  them  the  finest  mor- 
ality of  the  individual  American  is  identified  at  last  with  the 
morality  of  the  nation.  The  words  consecrate  the  loftiest  of  all 
American  ideals,  namely,  that  the  conduct  of  the  nation  shall 
be  inspired  by  a  humanity  so  pure  and  exalted  that  the  humanest 
citizen  may  realize  his  highest  ideals  in  devotion  to  it. 

That  ideal  still  animates  the  American  people.  We  are  not 
sending  out  our  young  men  today  to  fight  for  a  state  which 
acknowledges  no  duty  but  the  extension  of  its  own  merciless 
power.  We  are  sending  them  out  to  fight  for  a  state  which 
finds  its  highest  duty  in  the  defense  and  extension  of  justice  and 
mercy.  Our  national  purpose  has  been  solemnly  rededicated  to 
the  objects  of  the  canonized  Father  and  the  Preserver  of  the 
Republic.  We  are  not  to  break  with  our  great  traditional  aspira- 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  363 

tion  towards  the  expression  in  the  state  of  the  civility,  morality, 
and  responsibility  of  the  humanest  citizens.  In  the  noble  words 
of  Mr.  Wilson's  recent  address:  "The  hand  of  God  is  laid  upon 
the  nations.  He  will  show  them  favor,  I  devoutly  believe,  only 
if  they  rise  to  the  clear  heights  of  his  own  justice  and  mercy." 
So  believe  all  just  men. 

Here  then  let  us  close  our  appeal  to  those  who  have  drawn 
apart  from  this  our  war  and  have  sought  for  their  emotions  a 
neutral  place  of  refuge  above  the  conflict.  The  cause  of  America 
and  the  Allies  is  the  defense  of  the  common  culture  of  the  family 
of  civilized  nations.  It  is  the  cause  of  the  commor  wealth  of 
man.  The  ideals  and  principles  which  we  wish  to  take  hold  of 
character  and  govern  conduct  are  the  best  principles  and  ideals 
that  men  have.  We  need  not  fear  the  perils  that  beset  the 
propagandist  if  we  have  once  a  clear  vision  of  the  object  of  our 
propaganda.  We  need  not  fear  lest  we  become  wily  liars,  for 
our  very  object  is  that  central  human  truth  which  is  the  object 
of  all  knowledge.  We  need  not  fear  lest  we  become  venomous 
haters,  for  our  very  object  is  the  inculcation  of  the  sense  of 
human  brotherhood  and  human  compassion.  We  need  not  fear 
lest  we  become  besotted  nationalists,  for  our  very  object  is  the 
inculcation  of  a  sense  for  those  common  things  which  should  be 
precious  to  all  men,  everywhere,  at  all  times.  We  have  drawn 
the  sword  to  defend  what  Cicero  beautifully  called,  "the  country 
of  all  intelligent  beings." 


364  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

ETHICAL  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  WAR1 
GILBERT  MURRAY 

[Gilbert  Murray  (1866 )  is  regius  professor  of  Greek,  Oxford  Uni- 
versity. He  was  born  in  Sydney,  New  South  Wales.  After  being  graduated 
from  St.  John's  College,  Oxford,  he  was  for  a  year  Fellow  of  New  College, 
Oxford,  and  then  became  professor  of  Greek  in  Glasgow  University  (1889- 
1899).  While  in  his  present  position  he  has  several  times  visited  the  United 
States  to  lecture  on  Greek  literature.  Since  the  beginning  of  the  war,  he  has 
spoken  and  written  hi  a  very  thoughtful  way  upon  the  problems  of  the  war. 
Some  of  these  have  been  brought  together  in  book  form  under  the  title, 
Faith,  War,  and  Policy.  This  selection  was  originally  delivered  as  an  address 
to  the  Congress  of  Free  Churches,  England,  in  October,  1915,  and  represents 
the  reaction  toward  the  war  on  the  part  of  a  representative  Englishman.] 

Curiously  enough  I  remember  speaking  in  this  hall,  I  suppose 
about  fifteen  years  ago,  against  the  policy  of  the  war  in  South 
Africa.  I  little  imagined  then  that  I  should  live  to  speak  hi 
favor  of  the  policy  of  a  much  greater  and  more  disastrous  war, 
but  that  is  what,  on  the  whole,  I  shall  do.  But  I  want  to  begin 
by  facing  certain  facts.  Don't  let  us  attempt  to  bind  ourselves 
or  be  blinded  by  phrases  into  thinking  that  the  war  is  anything 
but  a  disaster,  and  an  appalling  disaster.  Don't  let  us  be  led 
away  by  views  which  have  some  gleam  of  truth  in  them  into 
believing  that  this  war  will  put  an  end  to  war — that  it  will 
convert  Germany,  and  certainly  convert  Russia  to  liberal  opin- 
ions, that  it  will  establish  natural  frontiers  throughout  Europe 
or  that  it  will  work  a  moral  regeneration  in  nations  which  were 
somehow  sapped  by  too  many  years  of  easy  living  in  peace. 
There  is  some  truth,  and  very  valuable  truth,  in  all  those  con- 
siderations, but  they  do  not  alter  the  fact  that  the  war  is,  as  I 
said,  an  appalling  disaster.  We  knew  when  we  entered  upon  it 
that  it  was  a  disaster — we  knew  that  we  should  suffer,  and  that 
all  Europe  would  suffer. 

Now  let  us  run  over  very  briefly  the  ways  in  which  it  is  doing 
evil.  Let  us  face  the  evil  first.  There  is,  first,  the  mere  suffering, 
the  leagues  and  leagues  of  human  suff  ering,  that  is  now  spreading 

1From  The  War  of  Democracy:  the  Allies'  Statement,  edited  by  James  Bryce.  (Copy- 
right, 1917,  Doubleday,  Page  &  Company.)  Reprinted  by  permission. 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  365 

across  Europe,  the  suffering  of  the  soldiers,  the  actual  wounded 
combatants,  and,  behind  them,  the  suffering  of  non-combatants, 
the  suffering  of  people  dispossessed,  of  refugees,  of  people  turned 
suddenly  homeless  into  a  world  without  pity.  Behind  that  you 
have  the  sufferings  of  dumb  animals.  We  are  not  likely  to  forget 
that.  There  is  another  side  which  we  are  even  less  likely  to  for- 
get, and  that  is  our  own  personal  losses.  There  are  very  few 
people  in  this  room  who  have  not  suffered  hi  that  direct,  personal 
way;  there  will  be  still  fewer  by  the  end  of  the  war.  I  don't  want 
to  dwell  upon  that  question;  the  tears  are  very  close  behind  our 
eyes  when  we  begin  to  think  of  that  aspect  of  things,  and  it  is 
not  for  me  to  bring  them  forward.  Think,  again,  of  the  state's 
loss,  the  loss  of  all  those  chosen  men,  not  mere  men  taken 
haphazard,  but  young,  strong  men,  largely  men  of  the  most 
generous  and  self -sacrificing  impulses  who  responded  most 
swiftly  to  the  call  for  their  loyalty  and  their  lives.  Some  of 
them  are  dead,  some  will  come  back  injured,  maimed,  invalided, 
in  various  ways  broken.  There  is  an  old  Greek  proverb  which 
exactly  expresses  the  experience  that  we  shall  be  forced  to  go 
through,  "The  spring  is  taken  out  of  your  year."  For  a  good  time 
ahead  the  years  of  England,  of  most  of  Europe,  will  be  without 
a  spring.  In  that  consideration  I  think  it  is  only  fair,  and  I  am 
certain  that  an  audience  like  this  will  agree  with  me,  to  add  all 
the  nations  together.  It  is  not  only  we  and  our  allies  who  are 
suffering  the  loss  there;  it  is  a  loss  to  humanity.  According  to 
the  Russian  proverb,  "They  are  all  sons  of  mothers,"  the  wildest 
Senegalese,  the  most  angry  Prussian.  And  that  is  the  state  that 
we  are  in.  We  rejoice,  of  course  we  rejoice,  to  hear  of  great 
German  losses;  we  face  the  fact.  We  do  rejoice;  yet  it  is  terrible 
that  we  should  have  to;  for  the  loss  of  these  young  Germans  is 
also  a  great  and  a  terrible  loss  to  humanity.  It  seems  almost 
trivial  after  these  considerations  of  life  and  death,  but  think, 
too,  of  our  monetary  losses;  of  the  fact  that  we  have  spent  1,595 
millions  and  that  we  are  throwing  away  money  at  the  rate  of 
nearly  five  millions  a  day.  Yet  just  think  what  it  means,  that 
precious  surplus  with  which  we  meant  to  make  England  finer 
in  every  way — that  surplus  is  gone. 


366  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

From  a  rich,  generous,  sanguine  nation  putting  her  hopes  in 
the  future,  we  shall  emerge  a  rather  poverty-stricken  nation, 
bound  to  consider  every  penny  of  increased  expenditure;  a 
harassed  nation,  only  fortunate  if  we  are  still  free.  Just  think 
of  all  our  schemes  of  reform  and  how  they  are  blown  to  the  four 
winds — schemes  of  social  improvement,  of  industrial  improve- 
ment; a  scheme  like  Lord  Haldane's  great  education  scheme 
which  was  fo  begin  by  caring  for  the  health  of  the  small  child, 
and  then  lead  him  up  by  a  great  ladder  from  the  primary  school 
to  the  university!  How  some  of  us  who  were  specially  inter- 
ested in  education  revelled  in  the  thought  of  that  great  idea;  but 
it  was  going  to  cost  such  a  lot  of  money.  It  would  cost  nearly  as 
much  as  half  a  week  of  the  war !  Think  what  riches  we  had  then, 
and,  on  the  whole,  although  we  are  perhaps  the  most  generous 
nation  hi  Europe,  what  little  use  we  made  of  them.  We  speak  of 
spiritual  regeneration  as  one  of  the  results  of  war,  but  here,  too, 
there  is  the  spiritual  evil  to  be  faced.  I  do  not  speak  merely  of 
the  danger  of  reaction.  There  will  be  a  grave  danger  of  political 
reaction  and  of  religious  reaction,  and  you  will  all  have  your 
work  cut  out  for  you  in  that  matter.  The  political  reaction,  I 
believe,  will  not  take  the  form  of  a  mere  wave  of  extreme  Con- 
servatism; the  real  danger  will  be  a  reaction  against  anything 
that  can  be  called  mellow  and  wise  in  politics;  the  real  danger 
will  be  a  struggle  between  crude  militarist  reaction  and  violent 
unthinking  democracy.  As  for  religion,  you  are  probably  all 
anxious  as  to  what  is  going  to  happen  there.  Every  narrow  form 
of  religion  is  lifting  up  its  horns  again;  rank  superstition  is  begin- 
ning to  flourish.  I  am  told  that  fortune-tellers  and  crystal- 
gazers  are  really  having  now  the  time  of  their  lives.  It  will  be 
for  bodies  like  yourselves  to  be  careful  about  all  that.  But 
besides  that  there  is  another  more  direct  spiritual  clanger.  We 
cannot  go  on  living  an  abnormal  lif e  without  getting  fundament- 
ally disorganized.  We  have  seen  that,  especially  in  Germany; 
with  them  it  seems  to  be  a  much  stronger  tendency,  much  worse 
than  it  is  with  us;  but  clearly  you  cannot  permanently  concen- 
trate your  mind  on  injuring  your  fellow  creatures  without  habitu- 
ating yourself  to  evil  thoughts.  In  Germany,  of  course,  there  is  a 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  367 

deliberate  cult  of  hatred.  There  is  a  process,  which  I  won't 
stop  to  analyze,  a  process  utterly  amazing,  by  which  a  highly 
civilized  and  ordinarily  humane  nation  has  gone  on  from  what 
I  can  only  call  atrocity  to  atrocity.  How  these  people  have  ever 
induced  themselves  to  commit  the  crimes  in  Belgium  which  are 
attested  by  Lord  Bryce's  Commission,  even  to  organizing  the 
flood  of  calculated  mendacity  that  they  pour  out  day  by  day, 
and,  last  of  all,  to  stand  by  passive  and  apparently  approving, 
while  deeds  like  the  new  Armenian  massacres  are  going  on  under 
their  egis,  and  in  the  very  presence  of  their  consuls,  all  this 
passes  one's  imagination.  Now  we  do  not  act  like  that;  there  is 
something  or  other  in  the  English  nature  which  will  not  allow  it. 
We  shall  show  anger  and  passion,  but  we  are  probably  not  cap- 
able of  that  organized  cruelty,  and  I  hope  we  never  shall  be.  Yet 
the  same  forces  are  at  work.  I  do  not  want  to  dwell  upon  this 
subject  too  long,  but  when  people  talk  of  national  regeneration 
or  the  reverse,  there  is  one  very  obvious  and  plain  test  which  one 
looks  at  first  and  that  is  the  drink  bill.  We  have  made  a  great 
effort  to  restrain  our  drinking;  large  numbers  of  people  have 
given  up  consuming  wine  and  spirits  altogether,  following  the 
King's  example.  We  have  made  a  great  effort  and  what  is  the 
result?  The  drink  bill  is  up  seven  millions  as  compared  with  the 
last  year  of  peace!  That  seven  millions  is  partly  due  to  the 
increased  price;  but  at  the  old  prices,  it  would  still  be  up  rather 
over  two  millions.  And  ahead,  at  the  end  of  all  this,  what  pros- 
pect is  there?  There  is  sure  to  be  poverty  and  unemployment, 
great  and  long  continued,  just  as  there  was  after  1815.  I  trust 
we  shall  be  better  able  to  face  it;  we  shall  have  thought  out  the 
difficulties  more;  we  who  are  left  with  any  reasonable  margin  of 
subsistence  will,  I  hope,  be  more  generous  and  more  clear-sighted 
than  our  ancestors  a  century  earlier.  But  in  any  case  there  is 
coming  a  time  of  great  social  distress  and  very  little  money 
indeed  to  meet  it  with.  We  shall  achieve,  no  doubt,  peace  in 
Europe;  we  shall  have,  probably,  some  better  arrangement  of 
frontiers,  but  underneath  the  place  there  will  be  terrific  hatred. 
And  in  the'heart  of  Europe,  instead  of  a  treacherous  and  grasping 
neighbor,  we  shall  be  left  with  a  deadly  enemy,  living  for  revenge. 


368  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

Now,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  do  not  think  that  I  have  shirked 
the  indictment  of  this  war.  It  is  a  terrible  indictment;  and  you 
will  ask  me,  perhaps,  after  that  description,  if  I  still  believe  that 
our  policy  in  declaring  war  was  right.  Yes;  I  do.  Have  I  any 
doubt  in  any  corner  of  my  mind  that  the  war  was  right?  I 
have  none.  We  took  the  path  of  duty  and  the  only  path  we  could 
take.  Some  people  speak  now  as  if  going  on  with  the  war  was  a 
kind  of  indulgence  of  our  evil  passions.  The  war  is  not  an 
indulgence  of  our  evil  passions;  the  war  is  a  martyrdom. 

Now,  let  us  not  exaggerate  here.  It  is  not  a  martyrdom  for 
Christianity.  I  saw  a  phrase  the  other  day  that  we  were  fight- 
ing for  the  nailed  hand  of  One  crucified,  against  the  "mailed 
fist."  That  description  is  an  ideal  a  man  may  carry  in  his  own 
heart,  but,  of  course,  it  is  an  exaggeration  to  apply  to  our  national 
position,  to  the  position  of  any  nation  in  international  politics. 
We  are  not  saints;  we  are  not  a  nation  of  early  Christians.  Yet 
we  are  fighting  for  a  great  cause.  How  shall  I  express  it?  We 
are  a  country  of  ripe  political  experience,  of  ancient  freedom;  we 
are,  with  all  our  faults,  I  think,  a  country  of  kindly  record  and 
generous  ideals,  and  we  stand  for  the  established  tradition  of 
good  behavior  between  the  nations.  We  stand  for  the  observ- 
ance of  treaties  and  the  recognition  of  mutual  rights,  for  the 
tradition  of  common  honesty  and  common  kindliness  between 
nation  and  nation;  we  stand  for  the  old  decencies,  the  old  human- 
ities, "the  old  ordinance,"  as  the  King's  letter  put  it,  "the  old 
ordinance  that  has  bound  civilized  Europe  together."  And 
against  us  there  is  a  power  which,  as  the  King  says,  has  changed 
that  ordinance.  Europe  is  no  longer  held  together  by  the  old 
decencies  as  it  was.  The  enemy  has  substituted  for  it  some  rule 
which  we  cannot  yet  fathom  to  its  full  depth.  You  can  call  it 
militarism  or  Realpolitik  if  you  like;  it  seems  to  involve  the 
domination  of  force  and  fraud;  it  seems  to  involve  organized 
ruthlessness,  organized  terrorism,  organized  mendacity.  The 
phrase  that  comes  back  to  my  mind  when  I  think  of  it  is  Mr. 
Gladstone's  description  of  another  evil  rule — it  is  the  negation 
of  God  erected  into  a  system  of  government.  The  sort  of  thing 
for  which  we  are  fighting,  the  old  ordinance,  the  old  kindliness, 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  369 

and  the  old  humanities — is  it  too  much  to  say  that,  if  there  is 
God  in  man,  it  is  in  these  things,  after  all,  that  God  in  man 
speaks? 

The  old  ordinance  is  illogical.  Of  course  it  is  illogical.  It 
means  that  civilized  human  beings  in  the  midst  of  their  greatest 
passions,  in  the  midst  of  their  angers  and  rages,  feel  that  there  is 
something  deeper,  something  more  important  than  war  or 
victory — that  at  the  bottom  of  all  strife  there  are  some  remnants 
of  human  brotherhood.  Now,  I  do  not  want  to  go  into  a  long 
list  of  German  atrocities;  much  less  do  I  want  to  denounce 
the  enemy.  As  Mr.  Balfour  put  it  in  his  whimsical  way:  "We 
take  our  enemy  as  we  find  him."  But  it  has  been  the  method 
throughout  this  war — the  method  the  enemy  has  followed — to 
go  at  each  step  outside  the  old  conventions.  We  have  sometimes 
followed.  Sometimes  we  have  had  to  follow.  But  the  whole 
history  of  the  war  is  a  history  of  that  process.  The  peoples 
fought  according  to  certain  rules,  but  one  people  got  outside  the 
rules  right  from  the  beginning.  The  broken  treaty;  the  calculated 
ferocity  in  Belgium  and  northern  France;  the  killing  of  women 
and  non-combatants  by  sea  and  land  and  air;  the  shelling  of 
hospitals;  the  treatment  of  wounded  prisoners  in  ways  they  had 
never  expected;  all  the  doctoring  of  weapons  with  a  view  to 
cruelty;  explosive  bullets:  the  projectile  doctored  with  substances 
which  would  produce  a  gangrenous  wound;  the  poisoned  gases; 
the  infected  wells.  It  is  the  same  method  throughout.  The  old 
conventions  of  humanity,  the  old  arrangements  which  admitted 
that  beneath  our  cruelties,  beneath  our  hatreds  there  was  some 
common  humanity  and  friendliness  between  us,  these  have  been 
systematically  broken  one  after  another.  Now  observe:  these 
things  were  done,  not  recklessly,  but  to  gain  a  specific  advantage; 
they  were  done,  as  Mr.  Secretary  Zimmermann  put  it  hi  the 
case  of  Miss  Cavell,  "to  inspire  fear."  And  observe  that  in  many 
places  they  have  been  successful.  They  have  inspired  fear.  Only 
look  at  what  has  recently  happened  and  what  is  happening  now 
in  the  Balkans.  Every  one  of  these  Balkan  states  has  looked  at 
Belgium.  The  German  agents  have  told  them  to  look  at  Belgium. 
They  have  looked  at  Belgium  and  their  courage  has  failed 


370  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

them.  Is  that  the  way  in  which  we  wish  the  government  of  the 
world  to  be  conducted  in  future?  It  is  the  way  it  will  be  unless 
we  and  our  Allies  stand  firm  to  the  end. 

All  these  points,  terrible  as  they  are,  seem  to  me  to  be  merely 
consequences  from  what  happened  at  the  very  beginning  of  the 
war.  There  are  probably  some  people  here  who  differ  from  what 
I  am  saying,  and  I  am  grateful  to  them  for  the  patient  way  in 
which  they  are  listening  to  me.  To  all  these  I  would  earnestly 
say:  "Do  not  despise  the  diplomatic  documents."  Remember 
carefully  that  the  diplomacy  of  July  and  August,  1914,  is  a 
central  fact.  Remember  that  it  is  the  one  part  of  the  history 
antecedent  to  this  war  which  is  absolutely  clear  as  daylight. 
Read  the  documents  and  read  the  serious  studies  of  them.  I 
would  recommend  specially  the  book  by  Mr.  William  Archer, 
called  "Thirteen  Days."  There  is  also  Mr.  Headlam's  admirable 
book,  "The  History  of  Twelve  Days,"  and  the  equally  admir- 
able book  by  the  American  jurist,  Mr.  Stowell.  There  the  issue 
is  clear  and  the  question  is  settled.  The  verdict  of  history  is 
already  given  in  these  negotiations.  There  was  a  dispute,  a 
somewhat  artificial  dispute,  which  could  easily  have  been  settled 
by  a  little  reasonableness  on  the  part  of  the  two  principals.  If 
that  failed,  there  was  the  mediation  of  friends,  there  was  a  con- 
ference of  the  disinterested  nations — there  was  appeal  to  the 
concert  of  Europe.  There  was  the  arbitration  of  The  Hague — 
an  arbitration  to  which  Serbia  appealed  on  the  very  first  day 
and  to  which  the  Czar  appealed  again  on  the  very  last.  All 
Europe  wanted  peace  and  fair  settlement.  The  governments  of 
the  two  Central  Powers  refused  it.  Every  sort  of  settlement  was 
overridden.  You  will  all  remember  that,  when  every  settlement 
that  we  could  propose  had  been  shoved  aside,  one  after  another, 
Sir  Edward  Grey  made  an  appeal  to  Germany  to  make  any 
proposal  herself — any  reasonable  proposal — and  we  bound  our- 
selves to  accept  it,  to  accept  it  even  at  the  cost  of  deserting  our 
associates.  No  such  proposal  was  made.  All  Europe  wanted 
peace  and  fair  dealing  except  one  Power,  or  one  pair  of  Powers, 
if  you  so  call  it,  who  were  confident,  not  in  the  justice  of  their 
cause,  but  in  the  overpowering  strength  of  their  war  machine. 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  371 

As  the  semi-official  newspaper  said:  "Germany  does  not  enter 
conferences  in  which  she  is  likely  to  be  in  a  minority."  By  fair 
dealing  they  might  have  got  their  rights  or  a  little  more  than  their 
rights.  By  war  they  expected  to  get  something  like  the  suprem- 
acy of  Europe.  In  peace,  with  their  neighbors  reasonable,  in 
no  pressing  danger,  Germany  deliberately  preferred  war  to  fair 
settlement;  and  thereby,  in  my  judgment,  Germany  committed 
the  primal  and  fundamental  sin  against  the  brotherhood  of  man- 
kind. Of  course,  ah1  great  historical  events  have  complicated 
causes,  but  on  that  fact  almost  alone  I  should  base  the  justice 
and  the  necessity  of  our  cause  in  this  war.  Other  objects  have 
been  suggested;  that  we  are  fighting  lest  Europe  should  be 
subject  to  the  hegemony  of  Germany.  If  Germany  naturally, 
by  legitimate  means,  grows  to  be  the  most  influential  power, 
there  is  no  reason  for  anyone  to  fight  her.  It  is  said  we  are  fight- 
ing for  democracy  against  autocratic  government.  I  prefer 
democracy  myself,  but  one  form  of  government  has  no  right  to 
declare  war  because  it  dislikes  another  form.  It  is  suggested  that 
we  are  fighting  to  prevent  the  break-up  of  the  Empire.  In  that 
case,  from  motives  of  loyalty,  of  course  we  should  have  to  fight, 
and  I  think  the  break-up  of  the  Empire  would  be  a  great  dis- 
aster to  the  world.  But  not  for  any  causes  of  that  description 
would  I  use  the  phrase  I  have  used,  or  say  that  in  this  war  we 
were  undergoing  a  martyrdom.  I  do  use  it  deliberately  now,  for 
I  believe  no  greater  evil  could  occur  than  that  mankind  should 
submit,  or  should  agree  to  submit,  to  the  rule  of  naked  force. 

Now  I  would  ask  again  those  who  are  following  me,  as  I 
say,  with  patience,  but  I  have  no  doubt  with  difficulty,  to  re- 
member that  this  situation,  in  spite  of  particular  details,  is, 
on  the  whole,  an  old  story.  The  Greeks  knew  all  about  it  when 
they  used  the  word  "Hubris" — that  pride  engendered  by  too 
much  success  which  leads  to  every  crime.  Many  nations,  after 
a  career  of  extraordinary  success,  have  become  mad  or  drunk 
with  ambition.  "By  that  sin  fell  the  angels."  They  were  not  so 
wicked  to  start  with  but  afterward  they  became  devils.  We 
should  never  have  said  a  word  against  the  Germans  before  this 
madness  entered  into  them.  We  liked  them.  Most  of  Europe 


372  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

rather  liked  and  admired  them.  But,  as  I  said,  it  is  the  old  story. 
There  have  been  tyrants.  Tyrants  are  common  things  in  history. 
Bloody  aggression  is  a  common  thing  in  history  in  its  darker 
periods.  But  nearly  always  where  there  have  been  tyrants  and 
aggressors  there  have  been  men  and  peoples  ready  to  stand  up 
and  suffer  and  to  die  rather  than  submit  to  the  tyrant;  the  voice 
of  history  speaks  pretty  clearly  about  these  issues,  and  it  says 
that  the  men  who  resisted  were  right.  So  that,  ladies  and  gentle- 
men, as,  with  our  eyes  open,  we  entered  into  this  struggle,  I  say, 
with  our  eyes  open,  we  must  go  on  with  it.  We  must  go  on  with  it 
a  united  nation,  trusting  our  leaders,  obeying  our  rulers,  minding 
each  man  his  own  business,  ref using  for  an  instant  to  lend  an  ear  to 
the  agitated  whispers  of  faction  or  of  hysteria.  It  may  be  that 
we  shall  have  to  traverse  it  until  the  cause  of  humanity  is  won. 

And  now,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  that  being  the  cause,  we  are 
girt  up  in  this  war  to  the  performance  of  a  great  duty;  and  there 
are  many  things  in  it  which,  evil  as  they  are,  can  in  some  way  be 
turned  to  good.  It  lies  with  us  to  do  our  best  so  to  turn  them. 

If  we  take  the  old  analogy  from  biology  we  are  a  community, 
a  pack,  a  herd,  a  flock.  We  have  realized  our  unity.  We  are  one. 
I  think  most  of  us  feel  that  our  lives  are  not  our  own;  they  be- 
long to  England.  France  has  gone  through  the  same  process  to 
an  even  greater  degree.  Mr.  Kipling,  who  used  certainly  to  be 
no  special  lover  of  France,  has  told  us  that  there  "the  men  are 
wrought  to  an  edge  of  steel,  and  the  women  are  a  line  of  fire 
behind  them."  Our  divisions  before  the  war  it  is  a  disgrace  to 
think  of.  They  were  so  great  that  the  enemy  calculated  upon 
them,  and  judged  that  we  should  not  be  able  to  fight.  These 
divisions  have  not  been  killed  as  we  hoped;  the  remnants  of 
them  are  still  living.  I  cannot  bear  to  speak  of  them.  Let  us 
think  as  little  as  possible  about  them,  and  lend  no  ear,  no  patience 
to  the  people  who  try  to  make  them  persist.  As  for  the  division 
of  class  and  class,  I  think  there,  at  least,  we  have  made  a  great 
gain.  I  would  ask  you  to  put  to  yourselves  this  test.  Remember 
how  before  the  war  the  ordinary  workman  spoke  of  his  employer 
and  the  employer  of  his  workmen,  and  think  now  how  the  aver- 
age soldier  speaks  of  his  officer  and  how  the  officer  speaks  of  his 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  373 

men.  The  change  is  almost  immeasurable.  Inside  the  country 
we  have  gained  that  unity;  outside,  in  our  relations  with  foreign 
countries,  we  have  also  made  a  great  gain.  Remember,  we  have 
allies  now,  more  allies,  and  far  closer  allies  than  we  have  ever 
had.  We  have  learned  to  respect  and  to  understand  other  nations. 
You  cannot  read  those  diplomatic  documents  of  which  I  spoke 
without  feeling  respect  for  both  the  French  and  Russian  diplo- 
matists for  their  steadiness,  their  extreme  reasonableness,  their 
entire  loyalty,  and,  as  you  study  them,  you  are  amused  to  see 
the  little  differences  of  national  character  all  working  to  one  end. 
Since  the  war  has  come  on  we  have  learned  to  admire  other 
nations.  There  is  no  man  in  England  who  will  ever  again  in  his 
heart  dare  to  speak  slightingly  or  with  contempt  of  Belgium  or 
Serbia.  It  is  something  that  we  have  had  our  hearts  opened; 
that  we,  who  were  rather  an  insular  people,  welcome  other 
nations  as  friends  and  comrades.  Nay,  more,  we  made  these 
alliances  originally  about  a  special  principle  on  which  I  would  like 
to  say  a  sentence  or  two.  That  is  the  principle  of  entente,  or 
cordial  understanding,  which  is  specially  connected  with  the 
name  of  our  present  Foreign  Secretary,  and,  to  a  slighter  extent, 
with  that  of  his  predecessor.  The  principle  of  entente  has  been 
explained  by  Sir  Edward  Grey  several  times,  but  I  take  two 
phrases  of  his  own  particularly.  It  began  because  he  found  that 
all  experience  had  shown  that  any  two  great  empires  who  were 
touching  each  other,  whose  interests  rubbed  one  against  another 
frequently  in  different  parts  of  the  world,  had  no  middle  course 
open  to  them  between  continual  liability  to  friction  and  cordial 
friendship.  He  succeeded  in  establishing  that  relation  of  per- 
fect frankness  and  mutual  friendship  with  the  two  great  empires 
with  whom  our  interests  were  always  rubbing.  Instead  of  fric- 
tion, instead  of  suspicion  and  intrigue,  we  established  with  our 
two  old  rivals  a  permanent  habit  of  fair  dealing,  frankness  and 
good  will.  The  second  great  principle  of  entente  was  this,  that 
there  is  nothing  exclusive  in  these  friendships.  We  began  it 
with  France,  we  continued  it  with  Russia,  we  achieved  it  in 
reality,  although  not  in  actual  diplomatic  name,  with  the 
United  States,  and  practically  also  with  Italy,  and  anyone  who 


374  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

has  read  the  diplomatic  history  will  see  the  effort  upon  effort 
we  made  to  establish  it  with  our  present  enemies.  I  think  we 
have  here  some  real  basis  for  a  sort  of  Alliance  of  Europe — that 
sort  of  better  concert  for  which  we  all  hope.  One  cannot  guess 
details.  It  is  very  likely  indeed  that  at  the  beginning  Germany 
will  stay  outside  and  will  refuse  to  come  into  our  kind  of  concert. 
If  so  we  must  "take  our  enemies  as  we  find  them."  The  fact  of 
there  being  an  enemy  outside  will  very  likely  make  us  inside  hold 
together  all  the  better  for  the  first  few  years.  When  we  are  once 
thoroughly  in  harness,  and  most  nations  have  the  practice  of 
habitually  trusting  one  another  and  never  intriguing  against  one 
another,  then,  no  doubt,  the  others  will  come  in. 

Now  I  spoke  at  the  beginning  about  the  possible  dangers 
of  reaction,  but  there  is  a  very  good  side  also  in  the  reaction. 
Part  of  it  is  right.  It  is  a  reaction  against  superficial  things, 
superficial  ways  of  feeling,  and  perhaps  also  superficial  ways  of 
thought.  We  have  gone  back  in  our  daily  experience  to  deeper 
and  more  primitive  things.  There  has  been  a  deepening  of  the 
quality  of  our  ordinary  life.  We  are  called  upon  to  take  up  a 
greater  duty  than  ever  before.  We  have  to  face  more  peril;  we 
have  to  endure  greater  suffering;  death  itself  has  come  close  to 
us.  It  is  intimate  in  the  thoughts  of  every  one  of  us,  and  it 
has  taught  us  in  some  way  to  love  one  another.  For  the  first  tune 
for  many  centuries  this  "unhappy  but  not  inglorious  generation," 
as  it  has  been  called,  is  living  and  moving  daily,  waking  and 
sleeping,  in  the  habitual  presence  of  ultimate  and  tremendous 
things.  We  are  living  now  in  a  great  age. 

A  thing  which  has  struck  me,  and  I  have  spoken  of  it  else- 
where, is  the  way  in  which  the  language  of  romance  and  melo- 
drama has  now  become  true.  It  is  becoming  the  language  of  our 
normal  life.  The  old  phrase  about  "dying  for  freedom,"  about 
"death  being  better  than  dishonor" — phrases  that  we  thought 
were  fitted  for  the  stage  or  for  children's  stories,  are  now  the 
ordinary  truths  on  which  we  live.  A  phrase  which  happened  to 
strike  me  was  recorded  of  a  Canadian  soldier  who  went  down,  I 
think  hi  the  Arabic,  after  saving  several  people;  before  he  sank 
he  turned  and  said,  "I  have  served  my  King  and  country  and  this 


IN  ARMS  FOR  DEMOCRACY  375 

is  my  end."  It  was  the  natural  way  of  expressing  the  plain  fact. 
I  read  yesterday  a  letter  from  a  soldier  at  the  front  about  the 
death  of  one  of  his  fellow-soldiers,  and  the  letter  ended  quite 
simply:  "After  all  he  has  done  what  we  all  want  to  do — die  for 
England."  The  man  who  wrote  it  has  since  then  had  his  wish. 
Or,  again,  if  one  wants  a  phrase  to  live  by,  which  would  a  few 
years  ago  have  seemed  somewhat  unreal,  or  "high  falutin',"  he 
can  take  those  words  that  are  now  in  everybody's  mind:  "I 
see  now  that  patriotism  is  not  enough — I  must  die  without  hatred 
or  bitterness  toward  anyone." 

Romance  and  melodrama  were  a  memory,  broken  fragments 
living  on  of  heroic  ages  of  the  past.  We  live  no  longer  upon 
fragments  and  memories;  we  ourselves  have  entered  upon  a 
heroic  age.  As  for  me,  personally,  there  is  one  thought  that  is 
always  with  me,  as  it  is  with  us  all,  I  expect — the  thought  that 
other  men  are  dying  for  me,  better  men,  younger,  with  more 
hope  in  their  lives,  many  of  them  men  whom  I  have  taught  and 
loved.  I  hope  you  will  allow  me  to  say,  and  will  not  be  in  any 
way  offended  by  the  thought  I  want  to  express  to  you.  Some  of 
you  wUl  be  orthodox  Christians  and  will  be  familiar  with  that 
thought  of  One  who  loved  you  dying  for  you.  I  would  like  to  say 
that  now  I  seem  to  be  familiar  with  the  feeling  that  something 
innocent,  something  great,  something  that  loves  me  has  died,  and 
is  dying  daily,  for  me.  That  is  the  sort  of  community  that  we  are 
now — a  community  in  which  one  man  dies  for  his  brother — and 
underneath  all  our  hatreds,  all  our  little  angers  and  quarrels, 
we  are  brothers  who  are  ready  to  seal  our  brotherhood  with 
blood.  It  is  for  us  that  these  men  are  dying,  for  us,  the  women, 
the  old  men,  and  the  rejected  men,  and  to  preserve  the  civiliza- 
tion and  the  common  life  which  we  are  keeping  alive  and  reshap- 
ing toward  wisdom  or  unwisdom,  toward  unity  or  discord.  Well, 
ladies  and  gentlemen,  let  us  be  worthy  of  these  men;  let  us  be 
ready,  each  one,  with  our  sacrifice  when  it  is  asked.  Let  us  try, 
as  citizens,  to  live  a  life  which  shall  not  be  a  mockery  to  the  faith 
these  men  have  placed  hi  us.  Let  us  build  up  an  England  for 
which  these  men,  lying  in  their  scattered  graves  over  the  face  of 
the  green  world,  would  have  been  proud  to  die. 


AFTER  THE   CONFLICT 

A  LEAGUE  TO  ENFORCE  WORLD  PEACE1 

WILLIAM  HOWARD  TAFT 

[William  Howard  Taft  (1857 ),  twenty-seventh  President  of  the 

United  States,  was  born  in  Cincinnati,  Ohio.  After  graduating  from  Yale 
University,  he  entered  upon  the  practice  of  law  in  his  native  city,  rising 
steadily  into  positions  of  public  trust  and  usefulness.  Among  the  most  nota- 
ble of  these  were  judge  of  the  Sixth  United  States  District,  the  first  civil 
governor  of  the  Philippine  Islands,  secretary  of  war  in  the  cabinet  of  President 
Roosevelt.  In  November,  1908,  he  was  elected  to  the  Presidency,  and  was 
renominated  at  the  close  of  his  term.  He  was,  however,  defeated  by  Woodrow 
Wilson,  and  has  been,  since  1913,  Kent  professor  of  law  in  Yale  University. 
He  has  always  taken  a  great  interest  in  the  questions  of  arbitration  and  world- 
wide peace.  This  selection  gives  an  account  of  one  of  the  most  widely  dis- 
cussed schemes  for  reducing  the  probability  of  war  as  much  as  possible.] 

This  is  an  assembly  of  those  who  direct  the  forming  of  char- 
acter of  the  youth  of  the  country  and  who,  because  of  their  in- 
telligence and  attention  to  the  issues  of  the  day  and  their  stand- 
ing in  the  community,  exercise  a  substantial  influence  in  fram- 
ing and  making  effective  the  popular  will.  This  meeting,  there- 
fore, gives  an  exceptional  opportunity  to  spread  to  the  four 
corners  of  the  United  States  the  consideration  of  a  constructive 
plan  for  national  and  human  betterment.  I  seize  this  chance  to 
bring  before  you  the  program  of  an  association  already  organ- 
ized and  active  to  promote  a  league  to  enforce  world  peace. 

Our  program  is  limited  to  the  establishment  of  such  a  league 
after  the  present  world  war  shall  close.  We  are  deeply  interested 
in  bringing  this  war  to  a  close,  and  we  would  rejoice  much  in 
successful  mediation,  but,  in  order  to  be  useful,  we  limit  our 
plan  to  the  steps  to  be  taken  when  peace  comes,  and  to  an  inter- 
national arrangement  between  the  powers  after  war  ceases. 

iFrom  Proceedings  of  the  National  Education  Association,  1916. 

376 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  377 

The  league  was  organized  on  Bunker  Hill  Day,  a  year  ago, 
in  Independence  Hall,  at  Philadelphia.  Its  program  contem- 
plates a  treaty  between  the  great  powers  of  the  world,  by  which 
the  signatories  agree  to  be  bound  to  four  obligations:  the  first 
is  that  all  questions  arising  between  the  members  of  the  league 
shall  be  submitted  to  a  judicial  tribunal  for  hearing  and  judg- 
ment; the  second,  that  all  questions  which  cannot  be  settled  on 
principles  of  law  and  equity  shall  be  submitted  to  a  council  of 
conciliation  for  hearing  and  a  recommendation  of  compromise; 
the  third,  that  if  any  member  of  the  league  commits  acts  of  hos- 
tility against  another  member  before  the  question  between 
them  shall  be  submitted  as  provided  in  the  first  two  articles  the 
remainder  of  the  members  of  the  league  shall  jointly  use  forth- 
with their  economic  and  military  forces  against  the  member  pre- 
maturely resorting  to  war  and  in  favor  of  the  member  prema- 
turely attacked;  the  fourth,  that  congresses  between  the  mem- 
bers of  the  league  shall  be  held  from  time  to  time  to  formulate 
and  codify  rules  of  international  law  to  govern  the  relations 
between  the  members  of  the  league,  unless  some  member  of  the 
league  shall  signify  its  dissent  within  a  stated  period. 

1.  Considering  the  fourth  clause  first,  the  question  arises: 
What  is  international  law?  It  is  the  body  of  rules  governing  the 
conduct  of  the  nations  of  the  world  toward  one  another,  acqui- 
esced in  by  all  nations.    It  lacks  scope  and  definiteness.    It  is 
found  in  the  writings  of  international  jurists,  in  treaties,  in  the 
results  of  arbitration,  and  in  the  decisions  of  those  municipal 
courts  which  apply  international  law,  like  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  and  courts  that  sit  in  prize  cases  to  determine 
the  rules  of  international  law  governing  the  capture  of  vessels 
in  naval  warfare.    It  is  obvious  that  a  congress  of  the  league, 
with  quasi-legislative  powers,  could  greatly  add  to  the  efficacy 
of  international  law  by  enlarging  its  application  and  codifying 
its  rules.  It  would  be  greatly  in  the  interest  of  the  world  and  of 
world  peace  to  give  to  such  a  code  of  rules  the  express  sanction 
of  the  family  of  nations. 

2.  Coming  now  to  the  first  proposal,  involving  the  submission 
of  all  questions  at  issue,  of  a  legal  nature,  to  a  permanent  inter- 


3?8  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

national  court,  it  is  sufficient  to  point  out  that  the  proposal  is 
practical  and  is  justified  by  precedent.  The  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States,  exercising  the  jurisdiction  conferred  on  it  by 
the  Constitution,  sits  as  a  permanent  international  tribunal  to 
decide  issues  between  the  states  of  the  Union.  The  law  govern- 
ing the  settlement  of  most  of  the  controversies  between  the 
states  cannot  be  determined  by  reference  to  the  Constitution,  to 
statutes  of  Congress,  nor  to  the  legislation  of  the  states.  Should 
Congress  in  such  cases  attempt  to  enact  laws,  they  would  be 
invalid.  The  only  law  which  applies  is  that  which  applies  be- 
tween independent  governments,  to  wit,  international  law.  Take 
the  case  of  Kansas  against  Colorado,  heard  and  decided  by  the 
Supreme  Court.  Kansas  complained  that  Colorado  was  using 
more  of  the  water  of  the  Arkansas  River  which  flowed  through 
Colorado  into  Kansas  than  was  equitable,  for  purposes  of  irri- 
gation. The  case  was  heard  by  the  Supreme  Court  and  decided, 
not  by  a  law  of  Congress,  not  by  the  law  of  Kansas,  not  by  the 
law  of  Colorado,  for  the  law  of  neither  applied.  It  was  decided 
by  principles  of  international  law. 

Many  other  instances  of  similar  decisions  by  the  Supreme 
Court  could  be  cited.  But  it  is  said  that  such  a  precedent  lacks 
force  here  because  the  states  are  restrained  from  going  to  war 
with  each  other  by  the  power  of  the  National  Government. 
Admitting  that  this  qualifies  the  precedent  to  some  extent,  we 
need  go  no  farther  than  Canada  to  find  a  complete  analogy  and 
a  full  precedent.  There  is  now  sitting,  to  decide  questions  of 
boundary  waters  (exactly  such  questions  as  were  considered  in 
Kansas  versus  Colorado),  a  permanent  court,  consisting  of  three 
Americans  and  three  Canadians,  to  settle  the  principles  of  inter- 
national law  that  apply  to  the  use  of  rivers  constituting  a  boun- 
dary between  the  two  countries  and  of  rivers  crossing  the  boun- 
dary. The  fact  is  that  we  have  got  so  into  the  habit  of  arbitra- 
tion with  Canada  that  no  reasonable  person  expects  that  any 
issue  arising  between  us  and  that  country,  after  a  hundred  years 
of  peace,  will  be  settled  otherwise  than  by  arbitration.  If  this 
be  the  case  between  ourselves  and  Canada,  and  England,  why 
may  it  not  be  practicable  with  every  well-established  and  ordered 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  379 

government  of  the  great  powers?  The  second  Hague  conference, 
attended  by  all  nations,  recommended  the  establishment  of  a 
permanent  international  court  to  decide  questions  of  a  legal 
nature  arising  between  nations. 

3.  The  second  proposal  involves  the  submission  to  a  com- 
mission of  conciliation  of  all  questions  that  cannot  be  settled  hi 
court  on  principles  of  law  or  equity.  There  are  such  questions 
which  may  lead  to  war,  and  frequently  do,  and  there  are  no 
legal  rules  for  decision.  We  have  such  questions  giving  rise  to 
friction  in  our  domestic  life.  If  a  lady  who  owns  a  lawn  permits 
children  of  one  neighbor  to  play  upon  that  lawn  and  refuses  to 
admit  the  children  of  another  neighbor,  because  she  thinks  the 
latter  children  are  badly  trained  and  will  injure  her  lawn  or  her 
flowers,  it  requires  no  imagination  to  understand  that  there  may 
arise  a  neighborhood  issue  that  will  lead  to  friction  between  the 
families.  The  issue  is,  however,  a  non-justiciable  one.  Courts 
cannot  settle  it,  for  the  reason  that  the  lady  owning  the  lawn 
has  the  right  to  say  who  shall  come  on  it  and  who  shah1  be  ex- 
cluded from  it.  No  justiciable  issue  can  arise,  unless  one's  im- 
agination goes  to  the  point  of  supposing  that  the  husbands  of 
the  two  differing  ladies  came  together  and  clashed,  and  then  the 
issue  in  court  will  not  be  as  to  the  comparative  training  of  the 
children  of  the  families. 

We  have  an  analogous  question  in  our  foreign  relations,  with 
reference  to  the  admission  of  the  Chinese  and  Japanese.  We  dis- 
criminate against  them  in  our  naturalization  and  immigration 
laws  and  extend  the  benefit  of  those  laws  only  to  whites  and 
persons  of  African  descent.  This  discrimination  has  caused  much 
ill-feeling  among  the  Japanese  and  Chinese.  We  are  within  our 
international  right  in  excluding  them,  but  it  is  easy  to  understand 
how  resentment  because  of  such  discrimination  might  be  fanned 
into  a  flame,  if,  through  lawless  violence  or  unjust  state  legisla- 
tion, the  Japanese  might  be  mistreated  within  the  United  States. 

We  have  had  instances  of  the  successful  result  of  commissions 
of  conciliation  where  the  law  could  not  cover  the  differences 
between  the  two  nations.  Such  was  the  case  of  the  Behring  Sea 
controversy.  We  sought  to  prevent  the  killing  of  female  seals 


380  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

in  the  Behring  Sea  and  asserted  our  territorial  jurisdiction  over 
that  sea  for  this  purpose.  The  question  was  submitted  to  inter- 
national arbitrators,  and  the  decision  was  against  us,  but  the 
arbitrators,  hi  order  to  save  to  the  world  the  only  valuable  and 
extensive  herd  of  fur  seals,  recommended  a  compromise  by 
treaty  between  the  nations  concerned,  and,  accordingly,  treaties 
have  been  made  between  the  United  States,  Great  Britain, 
Russia,  and  Japan,  which  have  restored  the  herd  to  its  former 
size  and  value.  So  much,  therefore,  for  the  practicable  charac- 
ter of  the  first  two  proposals. 

The  third  proposal  is  more  novel  than  the  others,  and  gives 
to  the  whole  plan  a  more  constructive  character.  It  looks  to  the 
use  of  economic  means  first,  and  military  forces  if  necessary,  to 
enforce  the  obligation  of  every  member  of  the  league  to  submit 
any  complaint  it  has  to  make  against  another  member  of  the 
league,  either  to  the  permanent  international  court  or  to  the 
commission  of  conciliation,  and  to  await  final  action  by  that 
tribunal  before  beginning  hostilities.  It  will  be  observed  it  is 
not  the  purpose  of  this  program  to  use  the  economic  boycott  or 
the  jointly  acting  armies  of  the  league  to  enforce  the  judgment 
declared  or  the  compromise  recommended.  These  means  are 
used  only  to  prevent  the  beginning  of  war  before  there  has  been 
a  complete  submission,  hearing  of  evidence,  argument,  and  de- 
cision or  recommendation.  We  sincerely  believe  that  in  most 
cases,  with  such  a  delay,  such  a  winnowing  out  of  the  issues,  and 
such  an  opportunity  for  the  peoples  of  the  differing  countries  to 
understand  one  another's  positions,  war  would  generally  not  be 
resorted  to.  Our  ambition  is  not  to  propose  a  plan,  the  perfect 
working  out  of  which  will  absolutely  prevent  war,  first,  because 
we  do  not  think  such  a  plan  could  perfectly  work,  and,  secondly, 
because  we  are  willing  to  concede  that  there  may  be  govern- 
mental and  international  injustice  which  cannot  be  practically 
remedied  except  by  force.  If,  therefore,  after  a  full  discussion 
and  decision  by  impartial  judges  or  a  recommendation  by  earnest, 
sincere,  and  equitable  compromisers,  a  people  still  thinks  that 
it  must  vindicate  its  rights  by  war,  we  do  not  attempt  in  this 
plan  to  prevent  it  by  force. 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  381 

Having  thus  explained  what  the  plan  is,  let  us  consider  the 
objections  which  have  been  made  to  it. 

The  first  objection  is  that,  in  a  dispute  between  two  members 
of  the  league,  it  would  be  practically  difficult  to  determine  which 
one  was  the  aggressor  and  which  one,  therefore,  in  fact  began 
actual  hostilities.  There  may  be  some  trouble  in  this,  I  can  see, 
but  what  we  are  dealing  with  is  a  working  hypothesis,  a  very 
general  plan.  The  details  are  not  worked  out.  One  can  suggest 
that  an  international  council  engaged  hi  an  attempt  to  mediate 
the  differences  might  easily  determine  for  the  league  which  nation 
was  at  fault  in  beginning  hostilities.  It  would  doubtless  be 
necessary,  where  some  issues  arise,  to  require  a  maintenance  of 
the  status  quo  until  the  issues  were  submitted  and  decided  in  one 
tribunal  or  the  other;  but  it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  these 
suggested  difficulties  are  insuperable  or  may  not  be  completely 
governed  by  a  detailed  procedure  that  of  course  must  be  fixed 
before  the  plan  of  the  league  shall  become  operative. 

The  second  objection  is  to  the  use  of  the  economic  boycott 
and  of  the  army  and  the  navy  to  enforce  the  obligations  entered 
into  by  the  members  of  the  league  upon  the  recalcitrant  member. 
I  respect  the  views  of  pacifists  and  those  who  advocate  the  doc- 
trine of  non-resistance  as  the  only  Christian  doctrine.  Such  is 
the  view  of  that  Society  of  Friends  which,  with  a  courage  higher 
than  that  of  those  who  advocate  forcible  means,  are  willing  to 
subject  themselves  to  the  injustice  of  the  wicked  in  order  to 
carry  out  their  ideal  of  what  Christian  action  should  be.  They 
have  been  so  far  in  advance  of  the  general  opinions  of  the  world 
in  their  history  of  three  hundred  years,  and  have  lived  to  see  so 
many  of  their  doctrines  recognized  by  the  world  as  just,  that  I 
always  differ  with  them  with  reluctance.  Still  it  seems  to  me 
that  in  the  necessity  of  preserving  our  civilization  and  saving 
our  country's  freedom  and  individual  liberty,  maintained  now 
for  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  years,  we  have  no  right  to 
assume  that  we  have  passed  beyond  the  period  in  history  when 
nations  are  affected  by  the  same  frailties  and  the  same  tempta- 
tions to  cupidity,  cruelty,  and  injustice  as  men.  In  our  domestic 
communities  we  need  a  police  force  to  protect  the  innocent  and 


382  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

the  just  against  the  criminal  and  the  unjust,  and  to  maintain 
the  guaranty  of  life,  liberty,  and  property.  The  analogy  between 
the  domestic  community  and  that  of  nations  is  sufficiently  close 
to  justify  and  require  what  is,  in  fact,  an  international  police 
force.  The  attitude  of  those  who  oppose  using  force  or  a  threat  of 
force  to  compel  nations  to  keep  the  peace  is  really  like  that  of 
the  modern  school  of  theoretical  anarchists,  who  maintain  that 
if  all  restraint  were  removed  and  there  were  no  government,  and 
the  children  and  youth  and  men  and  women  were  trained  to 
self-responsibility,  every  member  of  society  would  know  what 
his  or  her  duty  was  and  would  perform  it.  They  assert  that  it 
is  the  existence  of  restraint  that  leads  to  the  violation  of  right. 
I  may  be  permitted  to  remark  that  with  modern  fads  of  educa- 
tion we  have  gone  far  in  the  direction  of  applying  this  principle 
of  modern  anarchy  hi  the  discipline  and  education  of  our  chil- 
dren  and  youth,  but  I  do  not  think  the  result  can  be  said  to 
justify  the  theory,  if  we  can  judge  from  the  strikes  of  school 
children  or  from  the  general  lack  of  discipline  and  respect  for 
authority  that  the  rising  generation  manifests.  The  time  has  not 
come  when  we  can  afford  to  give  up  the  threat  of  the  police  and 
the  use  of  force  to  back  up  and  sustain  the  obligation  of  duty. 
The  third  objection  is  that  it  would  be  unconstitutional  for 
the  United  States,  through  its  treaty-making  power,  to  enter 
into  such  a  league.  The  objection  is  based  on  the  fact  that  the 
Constitution  vests  in  Congress  the  power  to  declare  war.  It  is 
said  that  this  league  would  transfer  the  power  to  declare  war 
away  from  Congress  to  some  foreign  council,  in  which  the  United 
States  would  have  only  a  representative.  This  objection  grows 
out  of  a  misconception  of  the  effect  of  a  treaty  and  a  confusion 
of  ideas.  The  United  States  makes  its  contract  with  other  na- 
tions under  the  Constitution  through  the  President  and  two- 
thirds  of  the  Senate,  who  constitute  the  treaty-making  power. 
The  President  and  the  Senate  have  a  right  to  bind  the  United 
States  to  any  contract  with  any  other  nation  covering  a  subject- 
matter  within  the  normal  field  of  treaties.  For  this  purpose  the 
President  and  the  Senate  are  the  United  States.  When  the  con- 
tract comes  to  be  performed,  the  United  States  is  to  perform  it 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  383 

through  that  department  of  the  government  which  by  the  Con- 
stitution should  perform  it,  and  which  should  represent  the 
government  and  should  act  for  it.  Thus,  the  treaty-making 
power  may  bind  the  United  States  to  pay  to  another  country 
under  certain  conditions  a  million  dollars.  When  the  conditions 
are  fulfilled,  then  it  becomes  the  duty  of  the  United  States  to 
pay  the  million  dollars.  Under  the  Constitution  only  Congress 
can  appropriate  the  million  dollars  from  the  treasury.  There- 
fore it  becomes  the  duty  of  Congress  to  make  that  appropriation. 
It  may  refuse  to  make  it.  If  it  does  so,  it  dishonors  the  written 
obligation  of  the  United  States.  It  has  the  power  either  to  per- 
form the  obligation  or  to  refuse  to  perform  it.  That  fact,  how- 
ever, does  not  make  the  action  of  the  treaty  power  in  binding 
the  United  States  to  pay  the  money  unconstitutional.  So  the 
treaty-making  power  may  bind  the  United  States  under  certain 
conditions  to  make  war.  When  the  conditions  arise  requiring 
the  making  of  war,  then  it  becomes  the  duty  of  Congress  honor- 
ably to  perform  the  obligation  of  the  United  States.  Congress 
may  violate  this  duty  and  exercise  its  power  to  refuse  to  declare 
war.  It  thus  dishonors  a  binding  obligation  of  the  United  States. 
But  the  obligation  was  entered  into  in  the  constitutional  way 
and  it  is  to  be  performed  in  the  constitutional  way.  We  are  not 
lacking  in  precedent.  In  order  to  secure  the  grant  of  the  Canal 
Zone  and  the  right  to  finish  the  canal,  the  treaty-making  power 
of  the  United  States  agreed  to  guarantee  the  integrity  of  Panama. 
The  effect  of  this  obligation  is  that  if  any  other  nation  attempts 
to  subvert  the  government  of  the  Republic  of  Panama  or  to 
take  any  of  her  territory,  the  United  States  must  make  war 
against  the  nation  thus  invading  Panama.  Now,  Congress  may 
refuse  to  make  war  against  such  a  nation,  but  if  it  does  so,  it  vio- 
lates the  honor  of  the  United  States  in  breaking  its  promise.  The 
United  States  cannot  make  such  a  war  unless  its  Congress  de- 
clares war.  That  does  not  make  the  guaranty  of  the  integrity  of 
Panama  entered  into  by  the  treaty-making  power  of  the  United 
States  unconstitutional.  So  here,  when  conditions  arise  under 
this  league  to  enforce  peace  which  would  require  the  United 
States  to  lend  its  economic  means  and  military  force  to  resist 


384  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

the  hostile  action  of  one  member  of  the  league  against  another, 
it  would  become  the  duty  of  Congress  to  declare  war.  If  Con- 
gress did  not  discharge  that  duty,  as  it  has  the  power  not  to  do 
under  the  Constitution,  it  merely  makes  the  United  States 
guilty  of  violating  its  plighted  faith. 

Again,  it  is  said  that  to  enter  into  such  a  league  would  require 
us  to  maintain  a  standing  army.  I  do  not  think  this  follows  at 
all.  If  we  become,  as  we  should  become,  reasonably  prepared  to 
resist  unjust  military  aggression,  and  have  a  navy  sufficiently 
large,  and  coast  defenses  sufficiently  well  equipped  to  constitute 
a  first  line  of  defense,  and  an  army  which  we  could  mobilize  into 
a  half-million  trained  men  within  two  months,  we  would  have 
all  the  force  needed  to  do  our  part  of  the  police  work  in  resisting 
the  unlawful  aggression  of  any  one  member  of  the  league  against 
another. 

Fourthly,  it  has  been  urged  that  for  us  to  become  a  party  to 
this  league  is  to  give  up  our  Monroe  Doctrine,  under  which  we 
ought  forcibly  to  resist  any  attempt  on  the  part  of  European  or 
Asiatic  powers  to  subvert  an  independent  government  hi  the 
Western  Hemisphere,  or  to  take  from  such  a  government  any 
substantial  part  of  its  territory.  It  is  a  sufficient  answer  to  this 
objection  to  say  that  a  question  under  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
would  come  under  that  class  of  issues  which  must  be  submitted 
to  a  council  of  conciliation.  Pending  this,  of  course,  the  status 
quo  must  be  maintained.  An  argument  and  recommendation  of 
compromise  would  follow.  If  we  did  not  agree  to  the  compromise 
and  proceeded  forcibly  to  resist  violation  of  the  Doctrine,  we 
would  not  be  violating  the  terms  of  the  league  by  hostilities 
entered  upon  thereafter.  More  than  this,  as  Professor  Wilson  of 
Harvard,  the  well-known  authority  upon  international  law,  has 
pointed  out,  we  are  already  under  a  written  obligation  to  delay 
a  year  before  beginning  hostilities,  in  respect  to  any  question 
arising  between  us  and  most  of  the  great  powers,  and  this  neces- 
sarily includes  a  violation  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  It  is  difficult 
to  see,  therefore,  how  the  obligation  of  such  a  league  as  this 
would  put  us  in  any  different  position  from  that  which  we  now 
occupy  in  regard  to  the  Monroe  Doctrine. 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  385 

Finally,  I  come  to  the  most  formidable  objection,  which  is 
that  the  entering  into  such  a  league  by  the  United  States  would 
be  a  departure  from  the  policy  that  it  has  consistently  pursued 
since  the  days  of  Washington,  in  accordance  with  the  advice  of 
his  "Farewell  Address,"  that  we  enter  into  no  entangling  alli- 
ances with  European  countries.  Those  of  us  who  support  the 
proposals  of  the  league  believe  that  were  Washington  living 
today  he  would  not  consider  the  league  an  entangling  alliance. 
He  had  in  mind  such  a  treaty  as  that  which  the  United  States 
made  with  France,  by  which  we  were  subjected  to  great  embar- 
rassment when  France  attempted  to  use  our  ports  as  bases  of 
operation  against  England  when  we  were  at  peace  with  England. 
He  certainly  did  not  have  in  mind  a  union  of  all  the  great  powers 
of  the  world  to  enforce  peace,  and  while  he  did  dwell,  and  prop- 
erly dwelt,  on  the  very  great  advantage  that  the  United  States 
had  in  her  isolation  from  European  disputes,  it  was  an  isolation 
which  does  not  now  exist.  In  his  day  we  were  only  three  and  a 
half  millions  of  people,  with  thirteen  states  strung  along  the 
Atlantic  seaboard.  We  were  five  times  as  far  from  Europe  as 
we  are  now  in  respect  to  speed  of  transportation,  and  we  were 
twenty-five  times  as  far  away  in  respect  to  speed  of  communi- 
cation. We  are  now  one  hundred  millions  of  people  between 
the  two  oceans  and  between  the  Canadian  line  and  the  Gulf. 
We  face  the  Pacific  with  California,  Oregon,  and  Washington, 
which  alone  make  us  a  Pacific  power.  We  own  Alaska,  the  north- 
western corner  of  our  continent,  a  dominion  of  immense  extent, 
with  natural  resources  as  yet  hardly  calculable,  and  with  a 
country  capable  of  supporting  a  considerable  body  of  population. 
It  makes  us  a  close  neighbor  of  Russia  across  the  Behring  Straits; 
it  brings  us  close  to  Japan  with  the  islands  of  the  Behring  Sea. 
We  own  Hawaii,  two  thousand  miles  out  to  sea  from  San  Fran- 
cisco, with  a  population  including  seventy-five  thousand 
Japanese  laborers,  the  largest  element  of  that  population.  We 
own  the  Philippine  Islands,  one  hundred  and  forty  thousand 
square  miles,  with  eight  millions  of  people  under  tie  eaves  of 
Asia.  We  are  properly  anxious  to  maintain  an  open  door  to 
China  and  to  share  equally  in  the  enormous  trade  which  that 

Y 


386  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

country,  with  her  four  hundred  teeming  millions,  is  bound  to 
furnish  when  organized  capital  and  her  wonderful  laboring  popu- 
lations shall  be  intelligently  directed  toward  the  development  of 
her  naturally  rich  resources.  Our  discrimination  against  the 
Japanese  and  the  Chinese  presents  a  possible  cause  of  friction 
in  the  resentment  that  they  now  feel,  which  may  lead  to  untoward 
emergencies.  We  own  the  Panama  Canal  in  a  country  which 
was  recently  a  part  of  a  South  American  confederation.  We  have 
invested  four  hundred  millions  in  that  great  world  enterprise  to 
unite  our  eastern  and  western  seaboards  by  cheap  transporta- 
tion, to  increase  the  effectiveness  of  our  navy,  and  to  make  a 
path  for  the  world's  commerce  between  the  two  great  oceans. 

We  own  Porto  Rico  with  a  million  people,  fifteen  hundred 
miles  out  at  sea  from  Florida,  and  we  owe  to  those  people  pro- 
tection at  home  and  abroad,  as  they  owe  allegiance  to  us. 

We  have  guaranteed  the  integrity  of  Cuba,  and  have  reserved 
the  right  to  enter  and  maintain  the  guaranty  of  life,  liberty,  and 
property,  and  to  repress  insurrection  in  that  island.  Since  origi- 
nally turning  over  the  island  to  its  people,  we  have  had  once  to 
return  there  and  restore  peace  and  order.  We  have  on  our 
southern  border  the  international  nuisance  of  Mexico,  and  no- 
body can  foresee  the  complications  that  will  arise  out  of  the 
anarchy  there  prevailing.  We  have  the  Monroe  Doctrine  still  to 
maintain.  Our  relations  to  Europe  have  been  shown  to  be  very 
near,  by  our  experience  in  pursuing  lawfully  our  neutral  rights 
in  our  trade  upon  the  Atlantic  Ocean  with  European  countries. 
Both  belligerents  have  violated  our  rights  and,  in  the  now  nearly 
two  years  which  have  elapsed  since  the  war  began,  we  have  been 
close  to  war  in  the  defense  of  those  rights.  Contrast  our  present 
world  relations  with  those  which  we  had  in  Washington's  tune. 
It  would  seem  clear  that  the  conditions  have  so  changed  as  to 
justify  a  seeming  departure  from  advice  directed  to  such  a  dif- 
ferent state  of  things.  One  may  reasonably  question  whether 
the  United  States,  by  uniting  with  the  other  great  powers  to 
prevent  the  recurrence  of  a  future  world  war,  may  not  risk  less 
in  assuming  the  obligations  of  a  member  of  the  league  than  by 
refusing  to  become  such  a  member  in  view  of  her  world-wide 


AFTER   THE  CONFLICT  387 

interests.  But  even  if  the  risk  of  war  to  the  United  States  would 
be  greater  by  entering  the  league  than  by  staying  out  of  it,  does 
not  the  United  States  have  a  duty  as  a  member  of  the  family  of 
nations  to  do  its  part  and  run  its  necessary  risk  to  make  less 
probable  the  coming  of  such  another  war  and  such  another  dis- 
aster to  the  human  race? 

We  are  the  richest  nation  in  the  world,  and,  in  the  sense  of 
what  we  could  do  were  we  to  make  reasonable  preparation,  we 
are  the  most  powerful  nation  in  the  world.  We  have  been  show- 
ered with  good  fortune.  Our  people  have  enjoyed  a  happiness 
known  to  no  other  people.  Does  not  this  impose  upon  us  a 
sacred  duty  to  join  the  other  nations  of  the  world  in  a  fraternal 
spirit  and  with  a  willingness  to  make  sacrifice  if  we  can  promote 
the  general  welfare  of  men? 

At  the  close  of  this  war  the  governments  and  the  people  of 
the  belligerent  countries,  under  the  enormous  burdens  and  suf- 
fering from  the  great  losses  of  the  war,  will  be  in  a  condition  of 
mind  to  accept  and  promote  such  a  plan  for  the  enforcement  of 
future  peace.  President  Wilson,  at  the  head  of  this  administra- 
tion and  the  initiator  of  our  foreign  policies  under  the  Consti- 
tution, and  Senator  Lodge,  the  senior  Republican  member  of 
the  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations,  and  therefore  the  leader 
of  the  opposition  on  such  an  issue,  have  both  approved  of  the 
principles  of  the  league  to  enforce  peace.  Sir  Edward  Grey  and 
Lord  Bryce  have  indicated  their  sympathy  and  support  of  the 
same  principles,  and  we  understand  that  M.  Briand,  of  France, 
has  similar  views.  We  have  found  the  greatest  encouragement 
in  our  project  on  every  hand  among  the  people.  We  have  raised 
a  large  fund  to  spread  our  propaganda.  I  ask  your  sympathy 
and  support. 


388  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

GOOD  TEMPER  IN  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS1 
LAWRENCE  PEARSALL  JACKS 

[Lawrence  Pearsall  Jacks  (1860 )  was  born  in  Nottingham,  England. 

Since  1903  he  has  been  professor  of  philosophy,  Manchester  College,  Oxford. 
He  is  also  editor  of  the  Hibbert  Journal.  During  the  war  he  has  contributed 
to  English  and  American  magazines  a  number  of  notable  war  articles.] 

Ethical  reconstruction  does  not  require  the  invention  of 
a  new  system  of  ethics.  The  old  systems  contain  enough  and 
more  than  enough  to  serve  our  purpose,  if  people  would  only 
put  them  into  practice.  These  old  systems  are  not  all  of  equal 
value  or  of  equal  truth,  but  the  least  true  of  them  stands  for 
something  in  advance  of  the  actual  practice  of  the  world.  If 
any  of  them  were  to  be  adopted  and  loyally  carried  out  by  man- 
kind— any  one  of  them  from  the  Chinese  system  of  Lao-Tse  to 
the  idealism  of  T.  H.  Green — we  should  see  an  immense  improve- 
ment in  the  conduct  of  men.  I  was  reading  the  other  day  about 
Epicureanism,  a  much  discredited  system.  But  I  could  not 
resist  the  impression  that  if  we  were  all  good  Epicureans  we 
should  behave  ourselves  much  better  than  we  do.  The  trouble 
about  ethics  is  not  that  the  systems  are  wrong — though  many 
of  them  are — but  that  people  don't  follow  them  even  where  they 
are  right. 

There  is  no  department  of  thought  where  the  distinction 
between  teaching  and  learning  is  of  more  importance.  To 
teach  ethics  is  one  thing;  to  get  the  ethics  learned  which  is 
taught  is  quite  another — though  the  two  are  very  often  confused. 
A  vast  amount  of  ethics  has  been  taught  which  mankind  has 
never  learned:  and  we  may  well  ask  ourselves  whether  a  world 
which  has  refused  to  hear  Moses  and  the  Prophets  will  be  more 
attentive  to  our  improvements  of  their  doctrine.  Let  us  remember 
that  the  moral  reformers  of  our  time  are  not  the  first  to  attempt 
ethical  reconstruction.  The  Ten  Commandments  were  an  ethical 
reconstruction  of  great  importance.  And  yet  many  generations 

The  Yale  Review,  vol.  vii,  p.  512  (April,  1918).    Reprinted  by  permission. 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  389 

of  men  have  been  taught  them  without  learning  them.  What 
better  fate  have  we  to  expect? 

So  then,  though  I  believe  ethical  reconstruction  to  be  much 
needed  today  as  a  result  of  the  great  social  upheaval  of  recent 
tunes,  I  doubt  if  it  is  to  be  brought  about  by  the  invention  of  a 
new  system  of  ethics.  Nor  need  we  invent  so  much  as  a  new 
virtue.  Here  again  the  old  virtues  are  sufficient.  What  we  should 
try  to  do,  in  the  interests  of  ethical  reconstruction,  is  to  study 
the  old  virtues  more  closely  and  fix  our  attention  on  that  one 
which  is  the  mother  of  them  all.  Perhaps  "the  mother"  is  too 
strong  a  term.  Some  of  the  virtues  are  climatic — by  which  I 
mean  that  they  furnish  the  climate,  the  atmosphere,  the  soil 
in  which  all  the  other  virtues  grow.  As  moral  reformers — not  as 
moral  philosophers  only,  but  as  moral  reformers  anxious  for  a 
reconstruction  of  ethics — we  should  fix  our  attention  on  these 
climatic  virtues.  We  may  be  sure  that  if  only  we  can  get  the 
climate  right,  the  atmosphere  right,  the  soil  right,  the  rest  will 
be  comparatively  easy;  whereas  if  the  climate  is  wrong  all  our 
labors  will  be  in  vain. 

The  climatic  virtue  I  am  about  to  name  as  the  basis  of 
ethical  reconstruction  is  one  which  is  hardly  mentioned  in 
any  textbook  of  moral  philosophy.  Its  name  lacks  the  dignity 
which  would  entitle  it  to  a  place  in  a  philosophical  treatise. 
It  is  simply  good  temper.  But  though  good  temper  is  a  very 
homely  expression,  it  is  certainly  not  more  vague,  nor  more 
likely  to  be  misunderstood,  than  any  of  the  great  moral  terms 
which  we  spell  with  capital  letters,  such  as  Justice,  Liberty,  or 
Truth.  Suppose  a  group  of  people  were  asked  these  two  ques- 
tions in  rapid  succession:  first,  What  is  truth? — then,  What  is 
good  temper?  I  venture  to  say  that  most  of  them  would  find  the 
truth  question  the  harder  of  the  two.  They  would  agree  more 
rapidly  about  good  temper  than  they  would  about  truth. 
William  James,  not  to  speak  of  others,  devoted  a  considerable 
part  of  his  philosophical  gifts  to  defining  truth.  But  no  phi- 
losopher, so  far  as  I  am  aware,  has  found  it  necessary  to  write 
a  treatise  on  the  meaning  of  good  temper.  The  reason  is  that  the 
term  is  sufficiently  well  understood  by  everybody  who  hears  it. 


390  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

Assured  of  that  I  name  good  temper  as  the  basic  virtue  of  ethical 
reconstruction. 

If  the  reader  is  not  satisfied  with  this  and  insists  on  having 
a  proper  definition  of  the  term  I  will  do  my  best  to  meet  him. 
Fortunately  I  am  able  to  quote  a  very  high  authority,  if  not  for 
a  definition  of  good  temper  at  least  for  a  most  accurate  de- 
scription of  it.  It  may  be  found  in  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  St. 
Paul's  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians.  That  we  may  have  them 
before  us,  here  are  a  few  of  the  statements : 

"Though  I  speak  with  the  tongues  of  men  and  of  angels  and 
have  not  charity  I  am  become  as  sounding  brass  or  a  tinkling 
cymbal." 

"If  I  should  bestow  all  my  goods  to  feed  the  poor,  and  if  I 
give  my  body  to  be  burned  and  have  not  charity  it  profiteth 
me  nothing." 

"Charity  never  faileth;  but  whether  there  be  prophecies 
they  shall  fail,  whether  there  be  tongues  they  shall  cease, 
whether  there  be  knowledge  it  shall  vanish  away." 

It  is  plain  that  St.  Paul  has  here  got  hold  of  one  of  those 
"mother- truths"  to  which  Goethe  attached  so  much  importance. 
He  is  describing  a  climatic  virtue — a  virtue,  that  is,  which  pro- 
vides the  air,  the  light,  the  soil  in  which  all  the  other  virtues 
grow.  It  is  quite  easy  to  translate  his  language  into  modern 
phraseology — and  to  bring  it  home  to  this  modern  question  of 
ethical  reconstruction.  "If  you  want  a  new  moral  world," 
St.  Paul  says  to  us,  "improve  your  temper.  Do  not  put  your  trust 
in  mere  arrangements  of  one  kind  or  another.  So  long  as  your 
temper  remains  bad  no  good  arrangement  can  do  itself  justice. 
Even  a  league  of  peace  would  not  work  if  the  parties  to  it  were  in 
a  bad  temper.  Unless  the  charity  that  never  faileth  is  present 
the  league  of  peace  will  spend  its  time  in  quarreling.  Do  not 
trust  in  knowledge,  for  knowledge  can  be  perverted  to  bad  ends, 
and  always  is  so  perverted  when  temper  is  bad.  Then  as  to 
social  problems — poverty,  distress,  and  the  others.  By  all  means 
let  public  money  be  raised  for  these  objects;  let  the  public  tax 
itself  that  the  poor  may  be  fed.  But  don't  spoil  your  temper  in 
the  process,  or  it  will  profit  nothing.  Above  all,  place  no  final 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  391 

confidence  in  tongues.  Ethical  reconstruction  is  not  to  be  effected 
by  making  speeches  about  it,  nor  by  writing  books  about  it,  nor 
by  passing  laws  about  it,  nor  by  spelling  it  with  capital  letters. 
Tongues  shall  cease,  partly  because  the  speakers  grow  tired, 
partly  because  the  hearers  grow  tired  of  listening  to  them. 
But  good  temper  is  never  tiresome  either  to  itself  or  to  others." 

Such  then  is  good  temper;  and  I  submit  that  it  is  the  greatest 
ethical  need  of  the  present  time.  No  matter  where  you  look,  to 
international  morals,  to  state  morals,  to  political  morals,  to 
private  morals — the  need  stands  out  as  one  and  the  same.  If 
we  take  the  evils  that  exist  in  any  of  these  departments,  and  the 
crimes  that  are  committed,  we  shall  find  ultimately  that  bad 
temper  is  at  the  root  of  them  all. 

First  as  to  the  international  situation.  When  we  look  at 
this  in  a  broad  light  what  must  strike  us  all  is  the  utter  un- 
reasonableness of  it,  the  sheer,  stark,  flagrant  unreasonable- 
ness— all  signs  of  bad  temper!  If  any  dozen  individuals  were 
to  take  up  the  reciprocal  attitudes  in  which  the  leading  states 
of  the  world  now  stand,  if  they  were  to  do  the  same  things 
to  one  another  and  to  say  the  same  things  of  one  another,  how 
should  we  judge  those  dozen  individuals?  These  men,  we  should 
say,  have  lost  their  tempers  and  their  heads.  They  are  beside 
themselves.  They  have  got  into  such  a  rage  with  one  another 
that  they  literally  don't  know  what  they  are  doing  nor  what  they 
are  talking  about.  They  are  all  mad  together. 

Let  us  go  to  the  mother-truth  of  things — even  though  it 
was  a  German  who  gave  us  that  advice.  What  was  the  origin 
of  the  present  war?  Bad  temper.  What  has  maintained  it  for 
three  years  and  more?  Bad  temper.  What  has  given  it  a  char- 
acter of  ferocity  which  has  no  parallel  in  the  recorded  wars  of 
history?  Bad  temper.  What  threatened  the  peace  of  the  world 
for  generations  before  the  war?  Bad  temper.  What,  unless  we 
are  very  careful,  will  continue  to  threaten  the  peace  of  the  world 
after  the  war  has  come  to  an  end?  Bad  temper. 

Turn  next  to  the  ethical  conditions  as  they  exist  within  the 
national  boundaries  of  the  British  Empire — I  am  writing 
from  England — or  at  least  as  they  did  exist  before  the  war. 


392  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

What  was  the  outstanding  feature  of  those  conditions?  Again, 
I  answer,  bad  temper.  Bad  temper  was  hindering  all  round. 
It  was  preventing  a  working  accommodation  between  labor  and 
capital.  It  was  preventing  a  settlement  of  the  Irish  question 
and  is  preventing  it  now.  It  was  keeping  a  whole  multitude  of 
groups,  parties,  and  sects  at  loggerheads  with  one  another.  It 
was  actually  dividing  the  sexes,  and  England  was  threatened 
with  a  woman's  war.  Everybody  was  in  a  rage  with  somebody. 
Reform  was  being  discussed  all  around;  but  it  was  not  being  dis- 
cussed amicably,  and  the  reformers,  instead  of  helping  one 
another,  were  hindering  one  another  and  getting  in  one  an- 
other's way.  There  were  many  of  them  abroad,  and  their 
temper  was  not  good. 

I  have  just  been  reading  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell's  book  on 
social  reconstruction;  and  I  confess  to  finding  in  it  a  certain 
oversight,  and  that  at  the  point  where  most  people  are  apt 
to  be  similarly  blind.  Mr.  Russell  speaks  of  the  strife  that 
always  goes  on  in  democratic  communities  between  the  sup- 
porters of  established  order  on  one  side  and  the  innovators, 
the  friends  of  progress,  on  the  other.  He  shows  how  these  two 
tendencies  by  operating  together  may  be  made  to  work  out  to  a 
good  result.  Now,  all  that  is  very  important,  but  it  is  by  no 
means  the  whole  of  the  story.  In  addition  to  this  strife  between 
established  order  and  innovation,  there  is  the  more  active  strife 
that  goes  on  among  the  innovators  themselves.  One  of  the 
commonest  mistakes  we  make  is  to  speak  of  progress  as  though 
it  had  a  unitary  aim,  as  though  all  innovators,  all  advocates  of 
change,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  formed,  a  like-minded  band 
of  brothers,  agreed  on  the  changes  that  ought  to  take  place, 
agreed  on  the  order  in  which  they  ought  to  come,  and  agreed 
as  to  the  manner  in  which  they  ought  be  to  carried  out.  This 
is  seldom  or  never  the  case  when  progressive  tendencies  are 
at  work.  On  the  contrary,  a  severe  struggle  for  existence  goes 
on  among  these  tendencies  themselves.  This  is  why  so  many 
promising  revolutions  have  come  to  nothing.  It  is  not  so  much 
because  the  old  order  was  wrong  as  because  the  new  tendencies 
became  weak  by  exhausting  their  strength  in  mutual  quarrels. 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  393 

In  this  way  the  French  Revolution  ended  in  the  military  despo- 
tism of  Napoleon;  and  we  all  can  see  how  a  like  danger  threatens 
the  Russian  Revolution  at  the  present  moment. 

These  things  suggest  to  us  the  immense  importance  of  good 
temper  in  a  democratic  community.  Of  all  the  forms  of  govern- 
ment man  has  devised,  democracy  is  the  one  which  requires 
the  largest  amount  of  sweet  reasonableness.  It  is  required  in 
order  to  adjust  the  immense  diversities  of  opinion  and  policy 
which  inevitably  arise  where  thought  is  free  and  where  an  open 
field  is  offered  for  the  proposals  of  the  innovator.  Per  contra, 
bad  temper  is  never  so  disastrous  as  it  is  under  democratic  con- 
ditions. Once  let  it  prevail,  and  the  forces  of  progress,  instead 
of  working  together,  fall  upon  one  another,  hinder  one  another, 
thwart  and  paralyze  one  another;  intelligence  is  expended  in 
party  or  sectional  warfare,  strength  goes  into  quarreling,  and 
there  is  an  immense  wastage  of  good  ideas.  Under  these  circum- 
stances democratic  government  is  not  self-government — of  the 
people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the  people — and  it  is  only  by  a 
fiction  that  we  can  call  it  even  representative.  For  what  is  then 
done  by  legislators  does  not  represent  what  the  people  want, 
but  only  so  much  as  is  left  over  of  what  they  want  after  the 
various  quarreling  sections  have  settled  their  accounts  and 
exhausted  their  spleen  and  their  rhetoric. 

Now,  this  was  the  condition  toward  which  all  classes  in 
England  were  drifting  before  the  war.  Some  people  might  say 
they  had  actually  arrived  at  it;  I  will  content  myself  with  say- 
ing they  were  drifting  toward  it.  The  good  of  democracy  was  in 
danger  of  being  spoilt  and  undone  by  the  abominable  ebullitions 
of  bad  temper  which  had  broken  out  among  the  various  parties 
and  sections  in  the  progressive  movement.  It  was  not  merely 
that  the  old  was  arrayed  against  the  new,  but  the  new  was 
arrayed  against  itself. 

One  of  the  effects  of  freedom,  as  we  all  know,  is  to  breed 
strong  individualities.  Freedom  allows  men  to  develop  on 
their  own  lines;  and  when  they  have  developed,  the  result  is 
an  immense  diversity  of  strongly  marked  individuals  with 
opinions  of  their  own  as  to  what  ought  to  be  done,  and  how  it 


394  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

ought  to  be  done.  This  is  what  we  all  want;  the  best  society 
is  precisely  that  which  includes  the  largest  variety  of  character 
and  type.  But  the  danger  is  this:  that  strongly  marked  individ- 
uals are  apt  to  be  intolerant  of  one  another.  That  danger  can 
be  avoided  only  when  the  spirit  of  accommodation,  the  spirit 
of  sweet  reasonableness — I  had  almost  said  the  spirit  of  good 
humor — is  in  the  ascendant.  If  the  opposite  spirit  prevails, 
democracy  becomes  a  mere  clash  and  struggle  of  the  divergent 
types  it  has  created;  and  often  it  has  gone  to  pieces  from  that 
very  cause  and  has  been  replaced  by  some  form  of  autocracy. 

The  terms  I  have  just  used — the  spirit  of  accommodation, 
and  the  rest — are  only  other  names  for  what  St.  Paul  calls 
"the  charity  that  never  faileth."  And  again  I  name  it  as  the 
basis  of  reconstruction.  As  time  goes  on,  the  strong  individual- 
ities which  liberty  produces  will  grow  stronger,  and  the  dif- 
ferences among  them  will  become  more  and  more  numerous.  I 
see  no  prospect  whatever  of  uniformity  of  type;  all  the  tendencies 
of  the  time  are  toward  diversities  of  type. 

Let  us  turn  back  for  a  moment  to  the  international  situa- 
tion. The  Allies  are  fighting  for  the  right  of  nationalities  to 
develop  on  their  own  lines.  If  that  ideal  is  realized,  what 
may  we  expect?  We  shall  have  a  large  number  of  nations,  a 
larger  number  than  ever,  each  of  them  developing  a  culture 
and  character  of  its  own,  becoming  a  strong  and  distinct  in- 
dividual with  opinions  and  ideals  of  its  own— diversity  of  type. 
But  suppose  these  nations,  each  with  its  own  strongly  marked 
character,  should  be  intolerant  of  each  other.  Suppose  they 
lack  the  spirit  of  accommodation,  of  sweet  reasonableness,  of 
tolerance,  of  good  humor.  Will  you  have  peace?  No,  you  will 
have  war.  Dangerous  as  bad  temper  is  when  a  dozen  distinct 
nationalities  are  involved,  it  will  become  far  more  dangerous 
when  there  are  a  hundred  of  them.  Once  more,  all  depends  on 
the  charity  that  never  faileth. 

Or  consider  the  state  of  affairs  in  any  one  country,  say, 
England,  after  the  war.  Think  of  the  immense  number  of 
reconstructions  of  all  sorts  that  have  been  already  planned 
out.  Two  pictures  arise  before  the  mind.  One  is  a  picture  of 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  395 

jostle  and  chaos  in  which  all  these  schemes  are  fighting  for 
front  place,  nobody  willing  to  give  way,  or  to  make  room,  each 
section  insisting  on  the  immediate  realization  of  its  own  demand, 
and  threatening  this  and  that  if  it  is  refused.  If  that  picture 
comes  true,  there  will  result  an  atmosphere  as  unfavorable  as 
it  well  could  be  to  any  kind  of  ethical  improvement.  The  other 
picture  is  more  difficult  to  paint.  It  is  the  picture  of  a  good-tem- 
pered community  animated  by  a  spirit  of  give  and  take,  accom- 
modating, reasonable,  considerate,  abounding  in  good  fellow- 
ship, ready  to  treat,  and  to  make  the  best  of  things  until  some- 
thing better  can  be  provided.  In  such  an  atmosphere  ethical 
improvement  would  have  a  favorable  climate.  Nay,  more.  The 
advent  of  this  social  and  political  good  temper,  in  place  of  the 
bad  temper  to  which  we  have  been  accustomed,  would  itself  be 
a  real  step  of  progress.  It  would  do  more  to  improve  the  value 
of  human  life  than  any  law  that  could  be  put  on  the  statute  book. 
Indeed,  it  would  do  the  work  of  law  to  a  very  great  extent.  For 
we  should  then  see  that  many  of  the  changes  we  seek  to  effect 
by  means  of  law  are  far  better  effected  by  the  exercise  of  common- 
sense  and  kind  feeling  as  between  man  and  man. 

The  general  conclusion  is  that  if  we  are  to  have  a  real  ethical 
reconstruction — actual  improvement  of  conduct — we  must  have 
a  basis  for  it,  or  rather  an  atmosphere  and  climate,  in  the  tem- 
per of  the  community.  The  question  then  arises,  How  are  we  to 
secure  good  temper?  What  are  the  causes  of  it?  Perhaps  it 
would  be  well  to  frame  the  question  rather  differently.  What  are 
the  causes  of  bad  temper  in  a  community?  I  rather  think  if  we 
could  keep  bad  temper  out  good  temper  would  come  in  of  itself. 

Bad  temper  inevitably  arises  whenever  material  wealth  is 
the  main  object  of  social  pursuit.  This  is  so  much  of  a  com- 
monplace that  I  need  hardly  pause  to  prove  it.  Some  people, 
however,  hold  it  in  a  rather  half-hearted  way.  They  hold 
that  wealth  causes  bad  temper  only  when  it  is  unfairly  dis- 
tributed. As  an  abstract  proposition  I  daresay  that  is  true. 
The  trouble  lies  in  the  application  of  it.  In  practice  it  is  extremely 
difficult  to  convince  anybody  that  his  share  of  wealth  is  a  fair 
one.  It  may  be  a  liberal  share,  it  may  be  a  large  share,  but  what 


3Q6  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

is  to  prevent  him  from  thinking  and  claiming  that  it  ought  to 
be  much  larger?  People  are  not  easily  satisfied  on  this  point, 
especially  when  they  are  inclined  to  be  suspicious  of  one  another. 
Far  be  it  from  me,  however,  to  belittle  the  importance  of  fair 
distribution.  Its  importance  cannot  be  exaggerated.  But  no 
scheme  of  that  kind,  even  though  it  is  worked  and  backed  by  the 
authority  of  the  state,  will  be  successful  unless  certain  conditions 
are  present.  The  conditions  are  that  the  parties  concerned  in 
the  distribution  shall  be  on  good  terms  with  one  another;  that 
the  various  trades,  and  the  various  ranks  of  labor,  from  the  most 
skilled  to  the  least,  shall  have  confidence  in  each  other's  good 
faith,  and  be  ready  to  take  a  generous  view  of  each  other's  merits. 
Only  in  such  an  atmosphere  can  anybody  be  got  to  accept  his 
share  as  a  fair  one.  If  the  opposite  conditions  are  present,  if 
the  spirit  of  suspiciousness  is  abroad,  if  bad  blood  is  in  circula- 
tion, if  groups  and  parties  have  no  confidence  hi  one  another,  if 
men  think  their  neighbors  are  trying  to  take  advantage  of  them, 
if  the  habit  is  to  assume  that  every  man  is  a  rascal  until  he  has 
proved  the  contrary,  then  the  scheme  of  distribution,  no  matter 
what  it  is,  will  satisfy  nobody.  "Fairness"  will  be  treated  as  a 
dodge,  and  if  the  state  backs  the  scheme  up,  the  cry  will  be  raised 
that  the  state  has  been  captured  by  villains.  We  are  fond  of 
talking  of  the  economic  basis  of  society.  I  venture  to  say  that 
society  has  no  basis  in  economics  either  good  or  bad.  The  basis 
of  society  is  human;  it  consists  in  the  mutual  trust  of  man  hi 
man,  which  no  economic  scheme  can  ever  replace. 

The  same  holds  true  of  international  relations.  So  long  as 
the  great  states  of  the  world  base  their  greatness  on  material 
possessions  they  will  never  love  one  another,  and  there  will 
be  mighty  little  of  the  charity  that  never  faileth  in  their  mutual 
dealings.  Rich  states  will  always  be  objects  of  envy  to  those 
less  rich  than  themselves.  We  shall  always  have  one  state  com- 
plaining that  it  hasn't  got  its  fair  share — a  sufficiently  large 
place  in  the  sun — and  pointing  to  some  other  state  which  has 
more  than  its  fair  share — which  is  exactly  what  Germany,  a 
very  rich  state,  has  been  doing  for  years.  It  is  impossible  to 
exaggerate  the  amount  of  international  bad  temper  which  arises 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  397 

from  this  very  cause — and  at  times  it  becomes  so  bad  that  nations 
are  perfectly  irrational,  and  the  very  elements  of  ethics  are  cast 
to  the  winds.  Of  course,  the  state  which  is  the  richest  of  all, 
and  has  no  cause  to  envy  the  others,  may  be  in  the  best  possible 
temper;  but  this  will  not  protect  it  from  the  evil  temper  of 
the  others  who  envy  its  supremacy.  Its  riches  will  expose  it 
not  only  to  envy  but  to  robbery;  and  no  sooner  does  that 
start  than  all  the  evil  passions  are  let  loose.  So  long  as  civiliza- 
tion is  based  on  wealth  the  outlook  for  international  good  temper 
is  very  black. 

Looking  now  to  the  inner  life  of  the  community,  can  we 
name  any  other  cause  of  bad  temper,  besides  that  connected 
with  the  pursuit  of  wealth?  I  believe  we  can.  There  is  a  tend- 
ency in  all  democratic  communities  to  over-legislate,  to  produce 
more  laws  than  are  needed.  Jeremy  Bentham,  who  knew  all  that 
was  to  be  known  in  his  time  about  law-making,  regarded  all 
legislation  as  a  necessary  evil.  Every  law  provokes  a  certain 
amount  of  bad  temper  in  the  process  of  making  it.  It  irritates 
the  community  for  the  time  being.  In  plain  language  there  is 
always  "a  row."  Can  we  name  an  important  law  about  the  mak- 
ing of  which  there  was  not  a  row?  Well,  these  rows  may  be 
necessary,  and  even  wholesome  up  to  a  point,  but  don't  let  us 
multiply  them  to  such  a  point  that  we  get  into  the  row-habit. 
Instead  of  trying  how  many  laws  we  can  make,  let  us  rather  try 
how  many  we  can  do  without,  if  only  for  the  sake  of  checking 
the  habit  of  quarrelsomeness;  because,  if  quarrelsomeness  be- 
comes chronic,  if  it  becomes  the  normal  temper  of  the  community 
then  unreasonableness  will  be  general,  and  ethical  reconstruc- 
tion will  be  out  of  the  question.  Remember  that  ethical  recon- 
struction is  always  reconstruction  by  consent.  But  we  shall  never 
get  that  consent  out  of  a  nasty-tempered  community.  One  of 
the  main  conditions  of  ethical  reconstruction  is  that  we  shall 
keep  legislation  within  proper  bounds,  that  we  shall  avoid  hav- 
ing so  much  of  it  that  our  tempers  become  permanently  spoiled. 

Putting  all  this  together,  it  is  evident  that  ethical  recon- 
struction depends  on  certain  profound  changes  in  the  struc- 
ture of  civilization.  They  indicate  a  time  when  wealth  will 


398  '  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

no  longer  be  the  basis  of  civilization;  and  when  people  will 
trust  one  another  more  than  they  do  and  rely  less  on  the  arm 
of  the  law.  Such  changes  will  not  come  about  suddenly,  and 
any  attempt  to  make  them  sudden  would  only  lead  to  dis- 
aster. We  have  before  us  no  more  than  an  object  of  gradual 
endeavor.  Yet  to  have  even  that  in  these  tunes  of  rocking  con- 
fusion is  no  small  thing,  and  we  can  begin  at  once. 

A  civilization  not  based  upon  wealth;  a  democracy  whose 
ideal  is  not  the  maximum  of  legislation  but  the  minimum. 
Such  is  the  dream.  Can  it  be  realized?  In  answer  let  me  re- 
mind the  reader  of  Plato's  conception  of  the  invisible  state. 
The  true  state,  according  to  Plato,  is  not  only  invisible  now, 
but  remains  invisible  forever.  Its  nature  is  to  be  invisible; 
it  can  never  be  otherwise.  "I  do  not  believe  it  is  to  be  found  any- 
where on  earth,"  says  Glaucon  at  the  end  of  the  ninth  book  of 
the  Republic.  "Ah  well,"  answers  Socrates,  "the  pattern  of  it 
is  perhaps  laid  up  in  heaven  for  him  who  wishes  to  behold  it. 
.  .  .  And  the  question  of  its  present  or  future  existence  on 
earth  is  quite  unimportant." 

But  many  persons  are  not  content  with  that.  They  insist 
on  turning  the  invisible  state  into  a  visible  one.  They  appear 
to  think  that  so  long  as  the  state  is  invisible  it  is  not  real  and 
doesn't  work.  It  never  occurs  to  them  that  in  trying  to  make 
it  visible  they  may  do  violence  to  its  nature;  so  that  it  becomes 
not  more  real  but  less  real,  and  gets  into  a  condition  where  it 
works  badly  or  doesn't  work  at  all.  And  yet  I  believe  that  such 
is  often  the  case. 

We  see  exactly  the  same  process  at  work  in  the  history  of 
religion.  The  mind  of  man  has  always  kicked  against  the 
notion  that  the  deity  is  invisible.  The  notion  has  been  that 
a  real  deity,  an  effective  deity,  must  be  a  deity  that  can  be  seen; 
that  an  invisible  deity,  if  I  may  say  so,  is  no  good.  Hence  in  the 
history  of  all  religions  we  can  trace  a  process  of  turning  the 
invisible  deity  into  the  visible  one,  and  the  process  ends  in  set- 
ting up  some  wooden  idol  of  the  god,  a  thing  one  can  see  and 
feel  and  handle — a  thing  of  which  one  can  say  '  'there  it  is." 
Then  it  is  discovered  that  by  making  the  god  visible  men  have 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  399 

done  violence  to  his  nature.  The  visible  wooden  idol  won't 
work.  It  can  neither  save  nor  help  nor  deliver.  By  becoming 
visible  it  has  lost  the  attributes  of  God — and  when  that  is  dis- 
covered the  idol  is  smashed. 

Most  of  our  current  notions  of  the  state,  even  as  they  are 
sometimes  expounded  by  philosophers,  are  at  the  stage  of 
idolatry.  They  lead  to  a  worship  of  visible  institutions.  Now, 
I  have  nothing  to  say  against  visible  institutions.  The  need  of 
them  is  obvious — parliaments,  laws,  highly  trained  departments, 
systems  of  town  arrangements,  and  perhaps  armies  and  navies — 
though  of  these  last  I  am  not  so  sure.  What  I  object  to  is  the 
worship  of  them.  Nothing  will  ever  persuade  me  that  these  visible 
things,  either  singly  or  together,  are  the  state;  while,  as  to  wor- 
shipping them,  I  would  as  soon  think  of  falling  down  on  the 
pavement  of  Whitehall  and  saying  my  prayers  to  the  War  Office. 
These  things  I  can  see;  but  the  true  state  is  something  which 
cannot  be  seen  and  which  I  for  one  do  not  expect  to  see  and  do  not 
want  to  see.  I  agree  with  Socrates:  the  question  of  its  present 
or  future  existence  on  this  earth  is  quite  unimportant. 

The  coming  changes  in  social  structure  will  take  the  form 
of  a  fuller  recognition  of  the  claims  of  the  invisible  state — 
unless  indeed  the  war  end  in  such  a  way  as  to  set  them  back 
for  the  time  being — as  would  unquestionably  happen  if  Germany 
were  to  win.  We  may  expect  a  gradual  decline  of  emphasis  on 
the  visible  state,  and  a  gradual  increase  of  emphasis  on  the  in- 
visible. The  change  will  come  without  violence,  and  there  will 
be  nothing  in  it  to  offend  the  supporters  of  established  order. 
Little  by  little  it  will  be  discovered  that  what  is  now  entrusted 
to  the  visible  forces  can  be  much  better  done  by  the  invisible. 
It  will  be  seen  that  human  nature  contains  immense  reserves  of 
invisible  force  which  have  never  yet  been  made  use  of.  The 
world's  resources  of  common  sense  and  kind  feeling  have  hardly 
been  tapped  up  to  now;  but  we  shall  tap  them  more  and  more, 
and  by  using  them  we  shall  build  up  the  true,  invisible  state. 

What  the  new  basis  will  be  is  hard  to  say.  Perhaps  Mr. 
Russell  has  got  the  right  word — creativeness.  Quality  must 
take  the  place  of  quantity.  The  ideal  will  no  longer  be  to  pro- 


400  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

duce  as  much  as  possible,  nor  to  get  as  large  a  share  as  you  can 
of  what  has  been  produced.  The  ideal  will  rather  be  that  every 
man  shall  enjoy  his  day's  work  and  that  a  good  article  shall  come 
out  at  the  end  of  it.  Beauty,  which  we  have  banished  from  our 
common  life,  with  such  dreadful  consequences  to  us  all,  so  that 
many  of  us  have  almost  lost  the  taste  for  excellence;  beauty, 
which  cannot  be  bought  for  gold  and  riches  and  is  so  shy  of  the 
places  where  men  make  money,  will  return  with  healing  on  its 
wings. 

The  creation  of  beauty — by  which  I  do  not  mean  mere 
pictures  to  hang  in  our  drawing-rooms  or  ornaments  to  place 
on  the  chimney  piece — but  excellent  articles  of  every  description, 
things  which  it  will  be  a  delight  to  make,  a  delight  to  have,  a 
delight  to  use — things  which  plainly  declare  that  the  workman 
has  enjoyed  his  day's  work  and  that  a  good  article  has  come  out  at 
the  end  of  it — this  will  provide  a  slowly  widening  field  for  human 
intelligence  and  human  energy.  It  will  not  do  away  with  com- 
petition: but  instead  of  competing  as  heretofore  as  to  who  can 
produce  most,  we  shall  compete  as  to  who  can  produce  best — 
a  very  different  thing — a  kind  of  competition  in  which  men  can 
freely  indulge  without  the  least  danger  that  they  will  learn  to 
hate  one  another  in  the  process.  It  will  teach  them  to  love  one 
another.  Meanwhile  the  true  state  will  remain  just  as  invisible 
as  it  now  is.  But  wherever  two  or  three  are  gathered  together, 
there  it  will  be  in  the  midst  of  them. 

In  conclusion  I  will  add  one  word  more  in  the  hope  of  per- 
suading the  reader  that  the  invisible  state  is  the  real  state.  Who 
are  the  members  of  the  state?  What  are  they?  Where  are  they? 
Shall  we  say  that  the  members  of  the  state  are  the  sum  total 
of  the  persons  who  happen  to  be  alive  at  the  moment?  Shall  we 
say  that  a  man  remains  a  member  of  the  state  only  so  long  as  he 
draws  the  breath  of  life  and  ceases  to  be  a  member  the  moment 
that  breath  goes  out  of  his  body?  What  then  of  the  thousands, 
of  the  tens  of  thousands  of  men,  who  have  laid  down  their  lives 
for  the  state  in  these  three  years?  When  the  bullet  struck  them 
down,  when  the  bursting  shell  blew  them  to  fragments,  did 
they  cease  then  and  there  to  be  members  of  the  state  for  which 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  401 

they  had  sacrificed  their  lives?  I  trow  not.  I  claim  them  as  the 
dearest  and  the  closest  and  the  most  influential  of  all  my  fellow- 
citizens  in  the  great  commonwealth.  And  yet  they  have  no 
votes,  and  yet  they  are  invisible !  Votes?  If  votes  could  be  given 
to  those  who  have  most  influence,  to  whom  would  they  be  given 
first?  They  would  be  given  to  the  invisible  multitudes  of  the 
mighty  dead — not  to  these  recent  dead  alone,  but  to  millions 
behind  them,  rank  behind  rank  in  the  long  tale  of  the  buried 
generations.  That  is  not  the  language  of  psychical  research.  It 
is  the  language  of  severe  political  philosophy.  It  is  the  statement 
of  a  fact. 


WHAT  SHALL  WE  WIN  WITH  THE  WAR?1 

ERNEST  HUNTER  WRIGHT 

[Ernest  Hunter  Wright  (1882 )  was  born  in  Virginia  and  pre- 
pared for  college  in  the  schools  of  that  state.  He  was  graduated  from 
Columbia  University  in  1905,  and  received  the  Doctor's  degree  from  the 
same  institution  in  1910.  Since  1910  he  has  been  a  member  of  the  English 
Department  of  Columbia  University,  and  now  holds  the  rank  of  Assistant 
Professor.  The  article  here  reprinted  is  an  interesting  forecast  of  some  of 
the  consequences  of  the  war.] 

In  material  gain  we  do  not  ask  a  groat's  worth  from  the  war; 
that  is  understood.  We  shall  give  billions  for  freedom,  but  do 
not  want  a  cent  in  booty.  We  are  ready  to  pour  out  our  blood 
that  the  world  may  be  rescued,  but  we  would  not  barter  a  drop 
of  it  for  patches  of  territory.  If  the  words  in  which  we  renounce 
the  spoils  hi  advance  have  grown  common  with  us  to  the  point 
of  triteness,  that  very  fact  is  truly  remarkable.  Except  that  we 
would  avoid  the  semblance  of  satisfaction,  at  present,  of  all 
times,  we  might  pause  to  wonder  how  often  hitherto  such  an 
ideal  as  this,  now  commonplace,  has  moved  a  people  of  free 
choice  to  an  equal  strife  and  sacrifice.  What  nation  before  has 
offered  all  the  gold  and  all  the  lives  that  may  be  needed  solely 

iFrom  The  Century,  vol.  xcvi,  p.  339  (July,  1918). 
Z 


402  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

that  an  idea  may  prevail?  But  let  the  question  be  anything 
except  a  boast.  It  implies  a  mere  fact,  accepted  as  self-evident 
among  us,  and  we  have  not  thought  to  plume  ourselves  upon  it. 
Not  we,  but  the  world,  has  learned  it.  It  is  one  great  thing  that 
we  have  already  won  out  of  the  war. 

Of  immaterial  things  there  are  also  a  number  that  we  do  not 
ask.  We  crave  no  vengeance.  Less  than  twenty  years  ago 
millions  of  us  made  patriotism  vocal  in  the  cry,  "Remember  the 
Mainel"  Now,  despite  hymns  of  hate  turned  finally  against 
ourselves  especially,  no  one  is  urging  us  to  remember  the  Lusi- 
tania.  We  are  not  trying  to  forget  it,  but  we  have  no  need  to 
spur  our  zeal  with  slogans  clamoring  for  penalties  unpayable  for 
deeds  irreparable,  done  to  us  or  done  to  others.  Nor  are  we  in 
the  lists  to  win  mere  honor.  We  would  not  lose  it;  we  dearly  hope 
that  when  the  clouds  of  battle  pass  we  shall  have  as  ample  a 
measure  of  it  as  our  friends  in  the  struggle  have  already  gained. 
Yet  we  should  never  have  plunged  into  a  national  duel,  any  more 
than  our  citizens  engage  in  private  ones,  to  settle  a  point  of 
honor  solely,  however  important  that  may  be.  On  the  contrary, 
even  in  humiliation  we  were  willing  to  endure,  as  in  settlement 
we  stand  ready  to  propose  "any  unprecedented  thing"  that 
promises  to  make  the  world  safer.  It  is  solely  because  safety 
will  come  in  no  other  way  that  we  commit  ourselves  to  fight  to 
the  last  ounce  of  our  manhood  for  its  preservation.  Whoever 
hopes  for  less  than  that,  or  whoever  lusts  for  more,  is  not  of  us. 
Of  that  we  are  certain. 

And  yet  it  may  be  that,  if  we  fight  like  men  for  that  cause, 
we  shall  win  much  more.  That  we  do  not  demand  more  is  the 
best  reason  for  believing  that  we  may  receive  it.  Mainly  the 
gain  may  come,  as  is  usual  with  immaterial  gams,  unsought, 
inevitably;  but  we  may  possibly  do  much  to  speed  its  coming  and 
assure  its  permanency  if  we  form  some  anticipation  of  it. 
Changes  of  vast  extent  are  certainly  coming  upon  us.  The  body 
social  cannot  be  stirred  and  shaken  in  unprecedented  action  only 
to  relapse  into  its  former  habitudes.  Ancient  questions  reviewed 
by  us  in  this  crisis  will,  some  of  them,  receive  new  answers,  and 
new  questions  will  arise.  We  shall  have  need  more  than  ever 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  403 

to  "Prove  all  things;  hold  fast  that  which  is  good."  May  we, 
then,  with  our  eyes  still  fastened  on  the  one  goal  that  must  be 
won,  consider  for  a  moment,  even  thus  early,  what  other  win- 
nings may  be  ours? 

We  may  win  unity.  To  many  of  the  more  discerning  among 
us,  of  whatever  social  creed,  the  lack  of  it  has  long  seemed 
one  of  our  failings.  "La  France,"  in  Michelet's  appealing  phrase, 
"est  une  personne;"  and  lovers  of  that  land  have  always  felt  the 
term  as  something  more  than  a  figure  of  speech.  Hardly  could 
the  warmest  admirer  of  the  United  States  have  used  it  of  his 
own  country  a  year  ago.  America  was  not  a  "person;"  she  was 
an  aggregation.  We  had  begun  as  disunited  colonies  uncom- 
monly diverse  in  social  or  religious  or  economic  aims,  and  the 
crisis  that  made  us  free  came  far  short  of  making  us  one.  Con- 
trarieties persisted  through  the  years  when  each  state  was  going 
its  own  precarious  way,  and,  when  the  intolerable  result  forced 
a  closer  federation,  burst  into  flames  of  antagonism  that  were 
smothered  with  difficulty,  and  only  partly,  by  the  compromises 
of  the  Constitution.  For  two  more  generations  they  smoldered 
on,  and  then  flared  up  in  a  wall  of  fire  searing  its  wide  way  be- 
tween the  two  camps  of  hatred  into  which  it  had  parted  the 
land.  The  first  of  our  crises  failed  to  unite  us,  and  the  second 
was  disastrously  divisive. 

All  that  is  over  now,  we  say,  and  thank  Heaven.  Well,  yes, 
if  we  mean  that  the  notion  of  secession  is  dead  and  that  the 
memory  of  Mosby  on  the  one  hand,  or  of  the  march  through 
Georgia  on  the  other,  is  all  but  obliterated.  But  if  we  mean  that, 
in  the  mass  of  the  people  especially,  no  prejudice  hangs  over  from 
the  ancient  time,  that  none  arises  out  of  the  still  different  social 
ideals  of  New  York  and  Charleston,  or  out  of  the  far  more  differ- 
ent interests  of  the  Southern  planter  and  the  Northern  banker 
and  merchant,  we  might  be  nearer  to  the  truth. 

Whatever  was  happening  in  Massachusetts,  south  of  the 
Potomac  boys  even  of  the  second  generation  after  Appomattox 
were  brought  up  in  considerable  distrust  of  the  offspring  of  the 
Yankee.  I  can  vouch  for  it  that  the  scion  of  the  new-comer  from 
the  North  had  a  hard  time  in  school  in  my  day  in  the  nineties. 


4o4  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

Many  a  day  we  sent  him  home  blubbering  his  r's  to  his  mother, 
and  the  principal  was  not  very  hard  on  us  for  it.  One  morning 
we  had  a  holiday  to  see  the  soldiers  go  off  to  Cuba.  We  sped 
them  on  their  way  with  clamorous  patriotism,  and  when  the 
train  was  out  of  sight  we  turned  our  surplus  energy  to  pummel- 
ing  the  little  carpet-bagger  from  Vermont.  A  few  months  later 
the  President  passed  through  our  town,  and  in  a  speech  gave 
thanks  that  a  common  cause  had  at  last  made  us  into  "one 
country  and  one  people."  But  it  was  not  quite  true,  as  the  little 
carpet-bagger  had  reason  to  know  later;  the  cause  had  not  been 
great  enough,  the  struggle  intense  enough,  to  bring  unison. 
There  was  still  a  North  and  a  South. 

More  strikingly  there  is  an  East  and  a  West,  or  several  Easts 
and  several  Wests.  A  land  so  vast  and  so  diversified  has  en- 
forcedly developed  different  types  and  clashing  interests,  and  its 
rapid  growth  has  left  its  people  little  leisure  to  reason  them- 
selves into  like-mindedness.  And  state  governments  have  aided 
physical  geography  in  this  matter.  In  one  state  you  may  do 
business  for  which  hi  another  you  would  go  to  jail;  in  one  you 
may  be  married  and  crazy,  in  another  single  and  sane.  In  the 
intelligent  society  of  certain  regions  a  young  man  who  has  no 
socialistic  leaning  is  in  danger  of  being  considered  unthinking, 
while  in  another  region  to  confess  to  socialism  would  be  to  court 
the  estate  of  outcast. 

However  little  we  may  habitually  think  of  it,  the  differences 
between  the  Californian  and  the  Vermonter,  the  Mormon  and 
the  South  Carolinian,  are  rather  extreme  for  a  country  so  young 
and  perfectly  at  peace  with  itself.  Think  of  the  charges  and 
countercharges  we  have  heard  recently  from  one  part  of  the 
country  accusing  another  part  of  apathy  toward  the  Great  War, 
think  of  the  campaigns  launched  in  one  region  with  the  purpose 
of  "waking  up"  another.  The  spectacle  of  a  prominent  author 
in  New  York  challenging  a  Kansas  bishop  to  raise  a  thousand 
dollars  for  a  war  charity,  and  offering  in  that  glad  case  to  retract 
her  charges  against  Kansan  hebetude,  is  a  case  in  point. 

The  more  disquieting  sight  of  many  delegates  in  Washington 
representing  one  region  of  the  country  as  against  or  at  the 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  405 

expense  of  the  whole,  with  the  pork-barrel  as  their  perfect  work, 
is  only  too  familiar.  Just  as  these  words  are  being  written,  the 
morning  paper  brings  a  pronouncement  from  a  congressman  that 
clamors  for  quotation.  The  legislator  points  out  that  ten  south- 
ern states  are  now  controlling  thirty-one  out  of  sixty  chairman- 
ships in  the  House,  that  four  of  these  states  alone  control 
eighteen  chairmanships,  and  that  the  South  should  keep  this 
power  at  great  costs. 
He  continues: 

But  it  won't  be  able  to  do  so  if  these  ten  southern  states  vote  almost 
solidly  against  the  Federal  Suffrage  Amendment.  The  South  has  every- 
thing to  lose  by  such  a  short-sighted  policy.  ...  I  speak  as  a  southern 
Democrat.  .  .  .  The  Democratic  party  is  now  in  control  of  all  branches 
of  the  Federal  Government.  Almost  every  committee  assignment,  so  far  as 
the  chairmanships  are  concerned,  is  held  by  southern  Democrats.  .  .  . 
For  the  southern  Democrats  hi  Congress  to  say  to  the  millions  of  patriotic 
women  of  the  nation  that  suffrage  shall  not  be  given  them  would  bring 
down  upon  our  heads  such  condemnation  from  the  suffrage  states  that  we 
would  be  driven  from  power. 

No  pleading  for  or  against  suffrage  here,  no  inquiry  as  to 
whether  even  the  South  wants  it,  nothing  but  unashamed  nudity 
of  sectional  grasping — in  the  ninth  month  of  the  war!  Our 
illustration  happens  to  be  furnished  by  a  Kentuckian,  but  others 
as  impressive  might  be  quoted  from  deputies  of  every  state. 
The  thing  would  be  amazing  if  it  were  not  so  American. 

But  even  such  differences  are  unimportant,  most  people  will 
agree,  in  comparison  with  those  of  social  or  of  economic  class. 
Oregonian  and  New  Yorker  can  get  along  together  when  they 
meet,  though  we  must  remember  that  the  vast  majority  of  them 
never  do  meet;  but  what  about  the  miner  and  the  coal  baron, 
the  I.  W.  W.  in  the  lumber  camp  and  the  broker  on  the  exchange? 
The  piece-worker  in  Allen  Street  and  the  negro  bent  over  the 
cotton  in  Mississippi  have  about  as  little  as  is  possible  in  common 
with  the  manufacturer  who  more  or  less  directly  pays  them  both. 

Of  course  we  share  class  problems  with  every  other  nation, 
and  with  some  for  whom  they  are  more  perplexing  than  for  us; 
but  the  rapidity  of  their  growth  in  this  land  of  plenty  is  rather 


406  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

remarkable.  The  contrast  here  between  the  four  hundred  and 
the  four  million,  between  dollars  and  muscle  or  inheritance  and 
brains,  has  grown  apace  for  a  country  where  nature  left  much  for 
all.  Twenty  or  so  years  ago  Coxey's  Army  was  a  joke;  today  it 
would  be  at  least  a  symptom,  and  the  difference  measures  a 
development  of  class  consciousness.  With  us,  also,  the  contrast 
is  likely  to  be  between  inordinate  wealth  and  dire  poverty.  In 
this  respect  we  are  very  like  England,  where  enormous  fortunes 
exist  side  by  side  with  bitter  penury,  and  we  are  much  worse 
off  than  France,  where  colossal  private  wealth  is  rarer  and  where 
unmitigated  poverty  is  all  but  unknown.  In  any  large  city  in 
America  a  single  block  often  separates  families  living  under 
conditions  more  extremely  different  than  could  well  be  found  in 
all  France.  And  to  emphasize  these  class  distinctions,  we  have 
imported,  mainly  into  the  four  million,  men  from  every  quarter 
of  the  globe,  and  made  up  in  two-thirds  of  the  states  a  piebald 
population  unparalleled  hi  any  sizable  area  of  the  Old  World. 
Most  of  the  so-called  mixed  races  of  Europe  are  fairly  pure  in 
comparison,  not  with  the  people  of  New  York  City,  but  with 
those  of  the  Wisconsin  plains. 

But  all  these  incongruities  have  never  brought  a  clash?  The 
melting-pot  has  never  boiled  over?  Well,  there  have  been 
mutterings.  There  are  some  thinkers,  and  not  excitable  ones, 
who  have  foreseen  a  race  war  in  store  for  us  or  for  our  children. 
There  are  others  who  fear  a  new  secession  as  the  land  fills  up  if 
interests  grow  more  contradictory.  There  are  far  more  who 
prophesy  a  conflict  of  classes  amounting  to  revolution.  Possibly 
we  need  fear  none  of  these  forecasts,  though  any  one  of  them 
might  have  seemed  plausible  four  years  ago  by  the  side  of  a 
prediction  that  we  should  now  be  at  war  in  Europe. 

Whatever  may  be  the  danger  of  the  future,  the  fact  that  we 
have  had  so  little  friction  in  the  last  fifty  years  has  been  due 
mainly  to  the  circumstance  that  we  were  all  too  busy  to  stop 
and  make  trouble.  Each  tenth  of  us  was  too  hard  pushed  to 
worry  overmuch  about  what  the  other  nine-tenths  were  doing. 
Few  people  want  a  revolution  when  they  are  too  rushed  to 
take  the  time  off  for  it  and  on  the  whole  too  prosperous  to  feel 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  407 

the  need  of  it.  But  quiescence  may  be  apathy,  not  unity.  The 
mere  indifference  of  most  of  us  to  the  rest  of  us  might  be  a  main 
reason  for  our  drifting  apart.  So  far  there  has  been  more  than  a 
man's  work  for  every  man,  with  little  tune  to  interfere  with  other 
men.  But  what  will  happen  in  the  day  approaching  fast  when 
there  is  less?  How  will  our  sectionalism,  our  class  antagonism, 
our  individualism,  measure  in  that  day  against  our  cohesion  as 
one  people? 

There  is  no  intention  here  of  borrowing  trouble  from  the 
future.  We  are  not  worrying  about  a  clash  that  may  or  may 
not  come;  we  mean  solely  to  mention  some  of  the  splendid 
changes  now  taking  place  in  regard  to  our  unity  as  a  people. 
The  answer  to  the  questions  just  propounded  no  one  knows,  of 
course,  though  everyone  has  hopes.  But  the  one  sure  fact  is  this: 
that  its  first  crisis  having  failed  to  weld  it  into  one,  and  its  second 
having  riven  it  asunder,  our  heterogeneous  half -continent  has  had 
to  wait  for  this  its  third  and  most  portentous  crisis  for  a  great 
common  cause.  We  have  met  a  problem  and  a  piece  of  work 
dwarfing  anything  that  we  ever  thought  would  fall  to  us. 

It  has  come  home  to  every  one  of  us,  of  whatever  region  or 
whatever  class.  We  know  that  we  shall  stand  or  fall  together, 
and  all  the  more  because  we  have  now  seen  the  one  other  country 
of  our  size  in  the  world  fall  before  our  enemy  because  divided.  A 
hundred  million  of  us  are  facing  Washington,  facing  Flanders, 
facing  life  and  death;  and  the  result  in  national  unity  already 
surpasses  all  expectation  and  all  precedent  among  us.  Ten 
million  men  and  women  have  opened  their  purses  to  lend  the 
nation  money;  not  an  act  of  high  virtue  at  a  four  per  cent  profit, 
though  the  refusal  would  have  been  vicious,  but  a  tie  of  no  mean 
force  among  those  people  and  between  them  and  the  Govern- 
ment. Ten  million  more  will  share  in  the  partnership  later. 
Millions  more  of  men  and  women  who  little  dreamed  a  year  ago 
of  deviating  from  their  daily  round  at  the  country's  call  have 
gone  to  camps  and  hospitals  and  trenches.  There  the  nephew  of 
Lee  has  taken  the  hand  of  the  grandson  of  Grant,  the  White 
Mountain  boy  is  keeping  step  with  the  Hoosier,  and  the  young 
millionaire  is  swapping  anecdotes  and  "makings"  with  the 


408  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

plumber — unless  the  plumber  has  won  his  spurs.  We  have  never 
had  a  school  of  equality  approaching  a  draft  army  facing  common 
work  and  common  peril.  It  is  as  democratic  as  the  Subway 
and  as  unifying  as  the  college,  without  the  bad  air  of  the  one  or 
the  manufactured  sentiment  of  the  other,  and  it  gives  also  a  fine 
training  hi  order,  precision,  Tightness  that  hardly  any  other 
American  institution  affords. 

Those  who  are  not  yet  called  to  this  onerous  service  are  get- 
ting at  home  an  appreciable  lesson  in  fraternity.  It  takes  a 
stringent  time  like  the  present  to  put  individual  men  and  classes 
on  their  mettle  in  confederate  effort.  And  classes  are  approach- 
ing each  other.  A  lady  throws  open  her  parlors  to  a  congress 
called  by  her  butler  to  consider  food-saving.  In  general, — for  the 
exceptions,  though  noisy,  are  few, — capitalist  and  laborer  stand 
shoulder  to  shoulder  straining  to  do  their  best.  In  general, 
labor  gains  increasingly  for  its  services,  and  capital  pays  the 
larger  bills  of  the  war,  a  fact  that  few  of  the  right-minded  will 
deplore.  And  if  the  small-salaried  man  feels  the  pinch  more  than 
either,  the  tightening  of  his  belt  will  probably  not  impede  a  desir- 
able expansion  of  his  better  sentiments.  The  few  who  stand  aloof 
and  "strut  their  uneasy  hour"  are  growing  lonelier  every  day. 
If  anyone  thinks  that  they  are  many,  a  little  reading  in  the 
history  of  the  Civil  War  on  either  side  will  soon  alter  his  opinion. 
He  will  easily  convince  himself  of  the  prime  fact  that  never 
before,  not  in  the  war  for  independence,  not  in  the  war  for  the 
union,  or  at  any  other  tune  or  over  any  other  question,  has 
America  enjoyed  such  unanimity. 

Based  on  free  consent,  a  unanimity  like  this  is  of  incalculable 
value.  It  need  not  interfere  with  a  high  degree  of  diversity  in 
non-essential  matters,  and  human  nature  may  be  amply  trusted 
to  see  that  it  does  not.  Small  as  she  is,  for  instance,  that  nation 
whom  Michelet  loved  to  call  a  "person"  because  in  the  hour  of 
need  she  could  be  of  one  mind,  rejoices  in  a  larger  diversity  of 
personal  or  local  habit  concerning  things  not  fundamental  than 
we  enjoy  in  this  country.  If  we  can  preserve  the  unity  we  have 
now  gained,  and  are  still  to  gain,  upon  non-essentials,  or  that 
portion  of  it  that  is  consonant  with  freedom  of  opinion  in  periods 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  409 

of  smaller  strain,  if  we  can  make  permanent  that  sense  of  inter- 
dependence between  each  tract  of  the  country  and  all  the  rest, 
between  each  social  group  and  all  the  others,  we  shall  have  won 
a  great  good  fortune  out  of  the  war. 

The  measure  of  all  this  that  we  shall  preserve  doubtless 
depends  largely  on  the  firmness  and  wisdom  with  which  we  pro- 
secute the  war  and  solve  the  problems  that  will  arise  when  we 
have  won  it.  At  least  we  have  an  opportunity  that  we  have 
never  had  before.  Is  it  too  much  to  hope  that  we  may  come  out 
of  the  war  deserving  some  such  phrase  as  that  with  which 
Michelet  crowned  his  country?  Without  that  single-mindedness 
in  the  face  of  danger  which  distinguishes  our  gallant  ally  possibly 
above  all  other  peoples,  the  battle  of  the  Marne  would  never 
have  been  won,  our  aid  might  never  have  been  possible,  and  the 
history  of  centuries  might  have  been  reversed.  One  could  hardly 
wish  a  larger  gain  for  his  own  country  than  that  she,  too,  prove 
worthy  of  the  title  so  fitly  given  to  happy  France. 

We  may  win  in  cosmopolitanism.  For  unanimity  at  home  is 
no  foe  to  cordiality  abroad,  but  rather,  in  all  ordinary  times, 
its  firm  ally.  And  whether  or  not  we  have  enjoyed  a  satisfactory 
harmony  among  ourselves,  it  is  all  but  universally  agreed  that  we 
have  been  slow  to  understand  and  to  appreciate  our  sister  nations. 
Here  again  we  had  too  much  work  at  home  to  worry  greatly  as 
to  what  was  happening  elsewhere.  We  also  had  a  strong  tradi- 
tion of  aloofness,  wise  in  its  origin  among  three  millions  depend- 
ing on  the  sailing-ship  for  their  connection  with  the  outer  world, 
but  dubious  indeed  in  its  application  to  a  hundred  millions  fur- 
nished with  steam  and  wireless.  But  whatever  the  reasons,  no 
one  can  well  profess  that  we  have  been  a  cosmopolitan  nation, 
while  many  would  argue  that  we  have  been  the  most  isolated  of 
all  great  peoples;  and  this  despite  the  fact  that  in  racial  origins 
we  are  about  the  most  international  of  all  and  great  globe- 
trotters to  boot. 

One  of  our  distinguished  ministers  to  a  foreign  country  was 
saying  the  other  day  that  in  general  our  diplomats  are  admired 
and  esteemed  abroad  as  upright  gentlemen  of  fine  capacity,  but 
that  for  years  they  have  astonished  the  statesmen  of  the  conti- 


4io  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

nent  by  their  ignorance  of  what  was  really  going  forward  in  the 
chancelleries  of  Europe,  or  their  indifference  to  it.  At  home  we 
have  produced  noble  statesmen  of  whom  we  are  justly  proud, 
but  hardly  an  international  figure.  In  business  and  finance  we 
have  had  potentates  hi  plenty,  but  few  whose  influence  has 
reached  far  beyond  our  own  shores — few  Rothschilds  or  Rhodeses. 
For  the  protection  of  South  American  republics  and  of  our  own 
we  have  upheld  a  Monroe  Doctrine  for  a  century;  and  how  much 
do  we  know  about  those  southern  countries  under  our  whig? 
Pitifully  little.  The  British,  French,  Spanish,  Germans  could 
give  us  lessons  about  our  nearest  neighbors. 

If  this  is  true  of  Ecuador,  what,  say,  of  the  Balkans?  How 
many  of  our  minds  went  absolutely  void,  a  few  years  ago,  at 
the  mention  of  them !  Many  Parisians  of  some  education  could 
have  drawn  us  a  pretty  good  map  of  them,  sketched  their  his- 
tory, named  then*  present  rulers,  and  told  us  a  little  about  their 
population  and  then-  industries.  The  stolid  indifference  of  many 
Americans,  especially  of  those  at  some  distance  from  centers  of 
discussion,  through  months  and  years  of  the  present  war,  the 
feeling  so  humiliating  to  some  of  their  compatriots  that  the  war 
was  a  squabble  between  powers  across  the  ocean  who  ought  to 
have  had  sense  enough  to  keep  the  peace,  and  that  it  was  none 
of  our  business  except  as  it  raised  our  prices  and  possibly  our 
incomes, — the  feeling  which,  translated  into  a  thousand  pla- 
cards, read,  "No  war  talk  here," — all  this  was  evidence  of  an 
insularity  unflattering  to  America.  It  is  useless  to  multiply 
the  uncomfortable  illustrations.  In  one  word,  we  were  a  great 
people  apart. 

Well,  we  are  going  to  get  over  a  great  deal  of  that,  and  it  is 
high  time  we  were  doing  so.  History  does  not  tell  a  very  reassur- 
ing tale  of  peoples  that  have  striven  to  live  apart,  any  more  than 
memoirs  give  a  comforting  account  of  recluses.  The  comparison 
is  not  perfect,  of  course,  but  it  is  certain  that  no  nation  can  cut 
itself  off  from  the  world  without  stunting  its  material  and 
spiritual  growth.  For  the  nation  as  for  the  individual  man,  "A 
talent  is  developed  hi  solitude,  a  character  in  the  current  of  the 
world."  Is  it  permissible  to  hazard  a  suspicion  that  while  we  had 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  4" 

talent  in  plenty,  especially  in  practical  and  in  inventive  efforts, 
if  less  in  pure  science  and  in  the  arts,  the  American  character, 
compared,  for  instance,  with  the  French  or  the  British,  was  a 
little  undefined  and  possibly  a  bit  loose-jointed? 

Perhaps,  if  true,  this  is  no  more  than  the  awkwardness  of 
adolescence,  and  if  so,  experience  is  the  remedy.  And  we  are 
now  beginning  a  full  experience  of  those  world  problems  which 
have  been  the  common  heritage  of  European  peoples.  Questions 
once  all  but  academic  here  have  become  vital  to  us  as  full  citizens 
of  the  world.  We  are  sharing  with  the  nations  that  lead  in  culture 
and  achievement  a  cause  perhaps  the  greatest  that  has  actuated 
effort  in  all  time.  And  our  own  part  in  the  effort  will  be  large, 
however  slight  it  may  of  necessity  remain  as  yet.  Our  blood  and 
our  counsels  will  mingle  with  our  friends',  we  shall  share  in  their 
triumph,  and  solve  with  them  the  problems  of  settlement  that 
ensue.  Our  one  hope  is  to  do  well. 

But  in  the  meantime  we  may  gain  much  that  is  of  great  price, 
and  much  that  is  beyond  price,  out  of  the  association.  We  may 
batter  down  that  wall  of  American  misprision  and  of  British 
disdain  that  has  separated  us  from  the  English.  We  shall  surely 
demolish,  if  we  have  not  already  done  so,  that  notion  once  so 
prevalent  among  us  that  the  Frenchmen  of  today  are  only 
anemic  descendants  of  their  lusty  forbears,  that  notion  that  led 
a  prominent  American  magazine  a  few  years  before  the  war  to 
conduct  a  long  debate  as  to  whether  the  French  were  a  decadent 
race  or  not.  We  may  put  an  end  to  one  belief  about  ourselves, 
unmerited,  if  ever  reputation  was,  yet  singularly  strong  in  the 
opinion  of  most  foreigners,  that  we  are  a  people  who  live  for 
money.  We  got  the  reputation  because  there  were  such  fortunes 
to  be  made  here  and  so  many  people  making  them;  and  no  prodi- 
gality or  philanthropy,  though  hi  both  we  led  the  world,  did 
much  to  palliate  it.  Whole-hearted  contribution  to  a  war  not  for 
ourselves  alone,  but  for  the  world,  may  wipe  out  the  last  vestiges 
of  that  prejudice.  Clearing  away  a  thousand  misunderstandings 
like  these,  we  may  conceivably  hope  to  cement  in  national  friend- 
ships the  foundations  of  enduring  peace. 

We  may  win  in  modesty.  It  is  a  gift  which  visitors  among  us 


4i3  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

from  abroad  and  observers  of  our  own  travelers  in  foreign 
countries  have  not  been  prone  to  take  as  typical  of  us.  To  have 
founded  a  country  on  principles  so  new,  borrowed,  though  they 
were  from  thinkers  of  the  Old  World,  and  to  have  made  a  wilder- 
ness into  a  world  power  within  a  century,  give  us  natural  reason 
for  pride  in  ourselves.  But  the  most  reasonably  proud  Americans 
— and  the  present  writer  would  fain  be  counted  among  them — 
have  not  infrequently  smiled  or  blushed,  according  to  their 
temperament  and  the  occasion,  at  irrational  exhibitions  of  boast- 
fulness  on  the  part  of  their  compatriots. 

To  the  thoughtful  traveler  abroad  in  other  days,  perhaps,  these 
words  will  best  commend  themselves,  for  few  of  us  have  got 
as  far  as  Southampton  without  wondering  where  the  particular 
boat-load  of  Americans  who  shared  the  voyage  could  have  been 
collected;  and  the  wonder  grew  as  we  kept  meeting  parties  from 
the  boat  at  strategic  points  for  sight-seeing  on  the  Continent. 
People  like  us  abroad,  of  course,  especially  in  France;  we  are  the 
most  generous  of  their  visitors  (unless  this  be  a  boast !)  and  we 
are  so  happy-go-lucky  that  we  are  easy  to  get  along  with.  But 
although  they  give  us  a  warm  welcome,  they  have  an  honest  feel- 
ing, more  of  amusement  than  of  malice,  that  they  must  expect 
a  good  deal  of  bragging  from  us.  And  we  ourselves,  when  we 
speak  of  "spread-eagleism,"  are  usually  thinking  of  our  own 
country.  One  of  our  weeklies  that  has  of  late  been  so  ferocious 
on  the  trail  of  unwise  patriots  as  to  leave  too  little  space  to 
mention  the  other  kind  was  itself  guilty  recently  of  saying  that 
"What  distinguishes  the  statesmanship  of  President  Wilson 
from  that  of  the  other  leaders  of  the  Allied  cause  ...  is 
nothing  but  superior  rationality."  Only  that !  Even  if  obviously 
true,  the  statement  would  be  exceptionally  raw.  So  far  as  the 
present  writer  knows,  America  is  the  first  of  the  Allies  to  print 
such  a  statement.  Supposing  that  an  English  review  had  said  it 
of  Lloyd-George  or  a  French  paper  of  Clemenceau,  how  should 
we  feel  about  it? 

Possibly  we  do  not  fully  deserve  the  notable  reputation  for 
spread-eagleism  that  we  have  gained,  but  in  view  of  the  illustra- 
tions it  is  only  fair  in  candor  to  plead  guilty  to  having  lighted  a 


AFTER  THE  CONFLICT  413 

good  deal  of  fire  under  all  the  smoke.  We  could  hardly  have 
savored  the  famous  "Yankee  in  King  Arthur's  Court"  so  much 
if  we  had  not  seen  ourselves,  however  caricatured,  hi  him.  Many 
of  us  have  been  a  little  like  him,  whether  in  a  court  abroad  or  hi 
the  bank  or  grocery  at  home.  We  were  the  people,  the  brave  and 
the  free.  We  had  the  red  blood,  let  the  blue  flow  through  whose 
veins  it  chose.  We  had  the  ships  and  the  guns — or  we  should  get 
them  the  minute  the  need  came,  if  it  ever  did.  We  thought  the 
French  were  effete;  there  is  no  use  denying  it,  however  much  we 
may  have  had  our  eyes  opened.  We  thought  the  English  were 
stupid,  more  or  less  Dundrearys,  and  we  stopped  only  too  in- 
frequently to  ask  how  Dundrearys  could  manage  such  an  empire 
so  harmoniously.  We  were  the  clean-cut  race  of  quick  brains. 
We  could  lick  the  world,  if  the  world  ever  required  it. 

To  be  sure,  we  had  a  good  deal  of  dirty  linen  to  wash  at 
home.  We  had  political  corruption  of  a  scale  unknown  in  the  two 
countries  just  mentioned.  We  had  poverty  undreamed-of  in  the 
first  mentioned  of  them.  We  were  coming  to  hate  a  captain  of 
industry  as  much,  and  as  indiscriminately,  as  we  hated  a  lord. 
Such  things  we  would  debate  among  ourselves,  but  let  a  foreigner 
approach  us  upon  these  topics,  and  we  turned  to  him  our 
American  front  and  proceeded  to  show  him  how,  despite  any 
little  injustices,  our  land  of  promise  enjoyed  a  certain  superi- 
ority over  his  own  outworn  country.  Not  always  did  we  do  this, 
but  too  frequently.  We  may  honestly  disclaim  arrogance;  we 
can  hardly  prefer  a  claim  to  modesty. 

But  much  of  that  we  m  ly  now  learn.  The  silence  of  French 
heroism  may  lead  us  to  emulation.  The  honest  confession  of 
British  muddling  may  teach  us  to  acknowledge  ours,  if  we  must. 
The  arrogance  of  Prussia  may  impress  upon  us  the  amiability  of 
its  opposite.  Congestion  on  railroads,  delays  in  ship-building, 
shortages  of  ammunition,  of  uniforms,  of  coal,  may  set  us  all  so 
busy  mending  faults  that  we  shall  have  time  neither  for  boasting 
nor  for  writing  articles  in  deprecation  of  it. 

Far  more  important,  the  powerful  enemy  that  confronts  us 
will  demand  every  ounce  of  strength  that  is  in  us  and  will  leave 
us  little  breath  for  words  of  self-gratulation.  A  brigand  armed 


414  NATIONAL  IDEALS  AND  PROBLEMS 

with  the  panoply  of  wealth  and  science  is  holding  the  world  at 
bay.  We  shall  find  him  mortal,  we  shall  overpower  him,  and  rid 
the  world  of  his  menace;  but  we  shall  know  that  we  did  not  do 
it  alone,  that  against  him  we  should  have  been  all  but  powerless 
alone,  and  the  lesson  will  be  a  good  one  for  our  self-esteem. 
Learning  from  the  British  and  Gallic  veterans,  as  we  must,  we 
shall  come  to  esteem  them  as  we  would  esteem  ourselves.  And 
our  foe  will  so  tax  our  powers  before  we  overcome  him,  will  so 
rudely  shake  any  over-confidence  we  may  have  felt,  that  in  the 
victory  we  shall  probably  feel  thanksgiving  without  vainglory. 
What  veteran  victor  over  Prussia  will  want  to  come  back  and 
teach  his  children  any  form  of  goosestep?  There  may  have  been 
a  little  of  that  when  we  declared  war, — not  much,  for  we  had 
learned  a  great  deal  in  three  years, — but  there  will  probably  be 
less  when  it  is  over.  There  was  some  of  it  in  and  after  our  clash 
with  Spain,  because  that  was  more  like  an  excursion  than  a  war. 
But  the  heroes  that  return  from  Belgium  will  be  soberer,  and 
despite  the  acclamations  with  which  we  shall  receive  them,  they 
will  find  us  soberer.  Let  it  be  hoped  that  our  modesty  and  our 
valor  may  be  equal. 

That  we  may  win  a  great  deal  more  than  has  been  suggested 
here,  or  than  can  be  comprehended  by  one  mind  considering  so 
large  a  question,  need  hardly  be  intimated.  To  mention  one 
material  benefit,  not  of  the  kind,  however,  that  was  waived  in 
our  first  sentences,  we  may  learn  enough  about  economy,  per- 
sonal and  national,  to  add  greatly  to  our  well-being.  At  the 
least  we  may  hope  never  again  to  hear — what  some  of  us  used  to 
feel  a  sort  of  pride  in — that  one  could  feed  Paris  with  the  food 
that  New  York  wastes.  At  the  most  we  may  expect  that  the 
education  hi  saving  which  will  come  to  people  of  all  classes  in  our 
spendthrift  nation  through  the  Liberty  Loans  will  endure  to  our 
benefit  long  after  the  war  and  possibly  within  a  generation  offset 
the  huge  cost  of  the  struggle. 

We  may  gain  hi  physical  manhood,  despite  heavy  losses,  by 
inuring  millions  of  men  to  work  and  air.  Until  one  sees  a  regi- 
ment of  raw  recruits,  and  remembers  that  they  are  chosen  men, 
one  scarcely  realizes  how  far  physical  training  has  been  the  affair 


AFTER   THE  CONFLICT  415 

of  the  minority  in  colleges  and  gymnasiums.  For  ourselves  and 
from  our  Allies  we  may  learn  a  good  deal  about  organization.  If 
we  have  thought  well  of  ourselves  in  this  respect  hitherto,  we  were 
usually  considering  private  organizations  rather  than  govern- 
mental. Foreigners  have  often  marveled  how  we  could  operate 
a  trust  so  well  and  a  city  or  state  so  badly,  and  many  of  us  have 
marveled,  also.  With  the  Government  assuming  a  large  share 
in  the  greatest  war,  in  which  the  control  of  railroads  and  of1 
other  enterprises  is  a  detail,  we  shall  be  more  stupid  than  we 
should  like  to  believe  if  we  do  not  reach  a  higher  mark  in  cor- 
porate management. 

For  many  further  benefits  we  may  reasonably  hope,  and 
doubtless  others  have  occurred  to  the  reader.  It  may  be  better 
for  us  not  to  make  our  prophecies  over-specific.  Certainly  general 
gain  may  be  predicted  a  good  deal  more  confidently  than  this  or 
that  particular  reform.  But  if  the  specific  prophecy  is  the  more 
precarious,  it  is  perhaps  also  the  less  important.  To  say  that 
gain  in  general,  over  and  above  the  attainment  of  our  prime  and 
unalterable  purpose  hi  the  war,  may  come  to  us  out  of  all  our 
tribulation  and  despite  all  our  losses,  to  state  this  for  our  comfort 
somewhat  expressly  in  reply  to  a  vague  opinion  still  persisting 
despite  of  history,  that  no  nation  ever  goes  to  war  for  any  reason 
with  results  other  than  damaging,  has  been  the  main  purpose  of 
this  article.  And  not  for  our  comfort  merely,  but  rather  that  we 
may  form  and  foster  some  idea  of  what  good  may  come  to  us, 
in  the  belief  that  its  coming  and  its  permanence  may  be  more 
probable  if  we  receptively  anticipate  it  for  the  land  we  love. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


E    following    pages    contain    advertisements    of 
books  by  the  same  author  or  on  kindred  subjects. 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

College  Life:   Its  Conditions  and 
Problems 

By  MAURICE  GARLAND  FULTON 

Professor  of  English  in  Davidson  College 

Cloth,  izmo,  524  pp.,  $1.40 

In  this  volume,  for  use  in  English  Composition  courses,  the 
selections  have  been  chosen  chiefly  from  the  writings  of  college 
presidents  and  other  educators.  They  relate  to  questions  and 
problems  of  the  student's  personal  relation  to  the  various  aspects 
of  college  life,  such  as  the  intellectual,  the  social,  the  athletic,  and 
the  scholastic.  The  material  thus  selected  not  only  enables  the 
student  at  the  beginning  of  his  college  career  to  come  in  contact 
with  sane  and  helpful  orientation,  but  also  stimulates  him  to  think 
in  his  composition  work.  The  suggestiveness  of  the  selections 
affords  an  impetus  in  the  practice  of  composition,  as  the  method  for 
teaching  the  subject  made  possible  by  the  use  of  this  book  provides : 
first,  for  the  reading  of  the  essays ;  second,  for  the  discussion  of 
their  leading  thoughts ;  and,  third,  for  the  writing  by  the  student 
on  topics  suggested  by  this  reading  and  discussion.  Although 
suggestiveness  in  ideas  has  been  the  main  criterion  of  choice,  the 
selections  serve  well  as  models  of  clear,  direct,  and  incisive  modern 
English.  The  selections  do  not  represent  the  different  types  of 
discourse,  but  endeavor  to  set  the  student  at  the  general  task  of 
composition  without  confining  him  too  narrowly  to  any  one  form. 
The  material  serves  readily  as  a  basis  for  the  expository  and  argu- 
mentative writing  which  is  generally  first  required  in  the  Freshman 
composition  course.  The  book  contains  the  following  parts  :  Pur- 
pose of  the  College ;  The  College  Curriculum ;  Choice  of  Courses  ; 
Intellectual  Ideals;  Athletics  and  Recreation;  General  Reading; 
College  Organizations;  College  Government;  Conduct  and  the 
Inner  Life ;  The  College  Man  in  the  World's  Work. 


THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

Expository  Writing 

Materials  for  a  College  Course   in  Exposition  by  Analysis 
and  Imitation 

COMPILED  AND  EDITED,  WITH  QUESTIONS  AND  EXERCISES,  BT 

MAURICE  GARLAND  FULTON 
Professor  of  English  in  Davidson  College 

Cloth,  i2mo,  555  pages,  $1.40 
EXTRACTS  FROM  PREFACE 

In  preparing  this  book  of  selections  illustrative  of  some  of  the 
various  phases  of  expository  writing,  for  use  either  in  the  general 
Freshman  course  in  English  composition  or  in  a  special  course  in 
exposition  to  be  taken  in  the  Sophomore  or  Junior  year,  I  have  had 
in  mind  certain  definite  aims,  the  principal  of  which  are  the  following: 
First,  to  make  definite  and  systematic  application  of  the  method  of 
learning  to  write  through  the  examination  and  imitation  of  good 
models.  Second,  to  centre  attention  upon  exposition,  since  it  is  the 
kind  of  writing  that  is  most  directly  serviceable  in  practical  life  and 
that  most  readily  exemplifies  the  essential  qualities  of  effective 
composition — accuracy,  logicalness,  and  economy  of  presentation. 
Third,  to  draw  the  selections  chiefly  from  the  field  of  scientific  writing, 
because  of  the  intrinsic  interest  of  such  subject-matter  to  young 
persons.  Fourth,  to  have  the  selections  of  such  length  that  the 
analysis  of  them  will  afford  a  "severe  logical  setting-up  exercise." 

This  book  aims  to  give  material  for  conducting  a  course  in  compo- 
sition by  the  method  of  analysis  and  imitation.  No  attempt  has 
been  made  to  teach  systematic  rhetoric.  The  purpose  has  been  the 
simple  one  of  opening  in  a  practical  way  the  student's  eye  to  some  of 
the  major  problems  of  writing. 

The  selections  presented  are  complete  articles,  chapters,  or  other 
large  component  parts  of  books,  rather  than  excerpts  of  a  few  para- 
graphs, in  order  that  the  study  of  them  may  afford  training  in  the 
power  to  think  straight,  which  is  so  little  a  part  of  the  rising  genera- 
tion. In  few  ways  can  the  strengthening  and  developing  of  the 
thinking  power  be  more  readily  secured  than  by  the  careful  analysis 
of  expository  selections.  Hence,  the  selections  in  this  book  are  of 
greater  length  than  is  usual  in  similar  volumes. 

THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

Publishers        64-66  Fifth  Avenue        New  York 


English  Composition 


BY  CHESTER  NOYES  GREENOUGH 

Professor  of  English  in  Harvard  University,  and 

FRANK  W.  C.  HERSEY 

Instructor  in  English  in  Harvard  University 

Cloth,  i2mo,  379  pages,  $1.40 

1.  The  book  makes  a  point  of  treating  that  part  of  the  process 
of  writing  which  takes  place  before  any  words  are  put  on  paper; 
namely,  the  perception  of  good  descriptive  and  narrative  material, 
and  the  use  of  books  and  periodicals  for  expository  and  argumenta- 
tive material;    weighing  and  estimating  of  one  authority  against 
another ;  the  use  of  libraries,  catalogues,  and  indexes,  and  the  making 
of  notes  on  books  and  lectures. 

2.  Throughout  it  treats  English  composition,  not  as  a  separate 
subject,  but  as  a  matter  which  runs  through  all  subjects  and  which 
includes  all  the  spoken  and  written  business  of  the  day. 

3.  In  description  and  argument,  which  are  sometimes  thought  to 
succeed  by  mere  vividness,  it  emphasizes  structural  principles. 

4.  Instead  of  merely  treating  the  principles  of  composition  —  unity, 
emphasis,  and  coherence  —  in  the  abstract,  after  briefly  explaining 
them,  it  shows  what  modifications  they  undergo  in  the  different 
kinds  of  composition. 

5.  The  exercises  and  original  problems  are  an  important  feature 
of  the  book. 

CONTENTS 

Introduction. 

Part  I.   Gathering  and  weighing  materials. 

Part  II.  Exposition,  including  Biography  and  Criticism;  Argu- 
ment; Description;  Narrative. 

Part  III.  Structure,  including  sentences,  paragraphs,  and  whole 
compositions  considered  with  respect  to  unity,  emphasis,  and  co- 
herence. 

Part  IV.  Diction,  including  grammar,  spelling,  pronunciation, 
abbreviations,  representation  of  numbers,  choice  of  words,  number 
of  words. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


College  Readings  in  English  Prose 

BY  FRANKLIN  W.  SCOTT 

Assistant  Professor  of  English,  and 

JACOB  ZEITLIN 

Associate  in  English  in  the  University  of  Illinois 

izmo,  653  pages,  $140 

"Six  hundred  pages  crammed  full  of  illustrative  material  in  all 
forms  of  composition.  Valuable  as  a  reference  book  for  models, 
most  of  which  are  new,  selected  from  modern  writers  or  speakers." 
—  School  Review,  Chicago. 

"The  specimens  selected  for  this  volume  of  prose  by  Professors 
Scott  and  Zeitlin,  of  the  University  of  Illinois,  represent  a  greater 
range  in  subject  matter,  in  typical  forms  and  in  variations  of  style 
than  other  texts  of  this  sort.  The  book  is  all  meat,  more  than  650 
pages  of  it.  The  editors  have  taken  account  of  the  special  interest 
of  the  engineering  and  agricultural  student,  and  have  provided 
material  which  will  appeal  particularly  to  his  taste,  without  being 
so  technical  in  treatment  as  to  baffle  the  lay  intelligence.  Many  of 
the  selections  are  from  contemporary  writings.  The  book  is  divided 
in  a  large  way  into  examples  of  exposition,  argument,  description, 
narrative,  and  letters.  The  appendix  contains  more  than  twenty- 
five  students'  themes  which  are  classified  under  the  same  general 
heads."  —  Journal  of  Education,  Boston. 

"Wider  in  range  than  most  similar  volumes."  —  English  Journal. 

"The  result  is  a  volume  which  the  general  reader  will  find  as  en- 
tertaining and  as  instructive  as  the  college  student.  The  articles 
are  arranged  under  the  various  heads  of  exposition,  argument,  de- 
scription, narrative,  and  letters."  —  San  Francisco  Chronicle. 


THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  Hew  York 


A  Manual  of  Good  English 

tfiy  HENRY  NOBLE  MAcCRACKEN 

President  of  Vassar  College 
and 

HELEN  E.  SANDISON 

Instructor  in  English  in  Vassar  College 

$.90 

The  present  volume,  a  review  of  authorized  practice  in 
English  composition,  is  intended  for  use  as  a  text  in  the 
Freshman  course  in  that  subject. 

The  present  tendency,  hi  the  teaching  of  English  com- 
position, for  power,  originality  and  vivid  expression,  makes 
it  essential  that  the  student  have  a  reminder  of  grammar 
and  good  form.  Such  a  reminder  this  book  is  designed  to 
be.  It  will  also  be  useful  to  the  writer  in  search  of  more 
detailed  discussions  of  disputed  usage  than  are  to  be  found 
in  the  dictionary. 

Great  care  has  been  taken  to  present  rules  and  ter- 
minology which  are  in  harmony  with  the  best  authorities 
and  with  reliable  current  usage,  and  to  incorporate  the 
best  use  of  great  bodies  of  publications  rather  than  the 
narrower  and  more  theoretical  rules  of  the  makers  of 
dictionaries.  The  treatment  of  questions  of  usage  and 
syntax  is  flexible.  Instead  of  saying  "this  is  right"  and 
"that  is  wrong"  there  is  a  certain  amount  of  gradation 
and  qualification.  In  fact  throughout  the  manuscript 
the  lack  of  dogmatism  is  noticeable.  The  matters  of 
typographical  detail  and  general  arrangement,  also,  have 
been  carefully  planned  with  the  convenience  of  the  stu- 
dent in  mind. 

The  chapter  headings  are:  I.  Words;  II.  Sentences; 
III.  Paragraphs ;  IV.  Punctuation ;  V.  Capitalization  and 
the  Use  of  Hyphens;  VI.  Spelling;  VII.  Preparation  of 
Manuscript  and  Correction  of  Proof ;  VIII.  Letter  Writ- 
ing ;  Appendix,  Exercises  for  Drill  in  Grammatical  Review. 


THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  Tork 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


NOV   !  5   '33* 


JAN  23  1935 
FEB  6  ~  1935 


t942 


NOV  3 


1  8  J962 

KEC'D  U 

RENEWAL     JUN  5 
MAY  2  8j 

lan 

flHKt     QCT2- 

SEP  3  01967 


NGVVl954 


Form"L-9-10m-2,'31 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


